digital-femme:

We live in a world where being body positive means starting your statement with “I love plus size women, but…” and then making whatever fat phobic statement you were going to make anyway. These bloggers are generally in their early 20’s, white and wear small sizes – but they’ve figured out that jumping on the the body positive train is the one that will help them get more readers. This frequently leaves me frustrated on both a personal and professional level. When I have a client who wants to work with bloggers to advertise a body positive product, do I send them to bloggers I know are making nasty comments about plus size women behind the scenes? Or do I tactfully steer them elsewhere, to bloggers with sincere attitudes but generally smaller numbers? I struggle with the nasty hidden side of lingerie blogging on a weekly basis due to my job and I don’t have an answer yet.

I feel like a lot of Body Positivity–and I’m definitely including myself in this–is actually championing fat women, or dark-skinned women, or disabled women for obtaining beauty in spite of their “flaw.” So the message isn’t “Fat women are beautiful!” but “Look how these women overcame fatness to be beautiful!”

It’s difficult for support of other women to feel sincere–no matter how much you truly admire them–when you hate your own body. Actions speak louder than words. Any talk of how gorgeous Amber Riley is (and she is) rings hollow when loudly lamenting how disgusting one’s own smaller body is. I’m guilty of this. And I suspect I’m not the only one.

We’re getting hit by (and harming others with) shrapnel from bullets not aimed at us. I haven’t endured direct insults about my skin tone since fourth grade (save for Twitter), but the women in my old neighborhood–only slightly lighter than I am–refusing to go anywhere in the summer without giant black umbrellas and linen wraps in tow made me feel bad. Would any of those women have ever called me ugly? I highly doubt it. But they certainly made it clear that they would hate for their skin to look like mine. So what messages do my insults about my body shape send?

I feel like we can only solve this problem by loving what we see in the mirror. But that seems like an impossible task for myself and so many other women. But at the very least we can fake it until we make it and stop insulting ourselves publicly. If we can’t do it for ourselves then at least we can do it to stop insulting others by proxy.

Get your fresh, unedited hot takes right here, folks!