Because black women, especially dark-skinned black women, deviate furthest from European beauty standards, they are more likely to experience self-hate, distorted body image, depression, and eating disorders. Unless you’re in possession of an uncanny confidence that isn’t directly proportional to how closely your aesthetic matches a European standard of beauty (in which case, congratulations and […]
Learning to eat was not about his health, it was about him meeting social norms. It was about me getting the approval of my peers. And in the end, my partner and I were not willing to risk inflicting emotional damage just to gain conformity. I was recently in the grocery store with my son […]
I will keep in mind that the goal of body positivity shouldn’t make me feel pressured. And if it does, then maybe I should go for body neutrality instead. To be honest, I’ve yet to solidify a New Year’s tradition that feels good deep in my bones. For most of my life, the holiday was […]
Now that I have children of my own, I’m determined to do what I can to inoculate them from the toxic culture of body hatred that surrounds them. When I was 16 years old, I weighed about as much as a 10-year-old. A 10-year-old girl, that is. I was a boy with an eating disorder. […]
My body positivism does not hinge on the idea that all bodies are perfect as they are, because for some of us, this isn’t true to our experience. I love body positivism. What’s not to love? I’m all about any movement for self-acceptance and being a little kinder to ourselves. And after the last few […]
It should be just hair but our culture actually puts way more weight on women’s heads than our follicles could ever produce. At some point during the last week I entered the world of the surreal. Why? Because I “allowed” my daughter to shave her head a few weeks ago. The response has been overwhelmingly […]
If we—as women with diverse body types, skin tones, and abilities—get to define for ourselves what beauty and sexiness look like, then the power will no longer rest with those who pad their fortunes with our self-loathing. I’m one of those women who has spent most of my life in and out of cycles of […]
Curvy is just who I am. I have the same kind of body that my mother had, that my grandmothers had. And I take good care of it. I can’t tell you exactly how it happened. I wish I could tell you there is a magic solution out there that could make all women accept […]
No one changes because you shame them into changing. “Are you sure you should eat that?” I can’t remember the first time I was asked that, but I was very young, maybe 6 or 7? I felt it far before the words were said aloud. The looks. The awareness of every cookie, every second helping. […]
This originally appeared on xoJane. Republished here with permission. No one knew that I added 20 pounds in my mind when I looked in the mirror. No one knew because boys don’t do that. We may self-deprecate. We may not like our bodies as is. But we don’t do eating disorders. I’ve always been picked […]
When an icon like Jennifer Aniston laments that a perfectly healthy, thin body is too heavy for her liking, we, as a society, have a problem. Accepting my body has never been easy for me. Even at my smallest, I saw what I believed were imperfections: the dimpling on my right hip, the skin that […]
