Sister, lover, French major, radical birth doula/labor assistant, feminist, pagan, anti-oppression, queer, polyamorous, French Canadian, Hufflepuff, in love with pizza and my cat.
I like to talk about most things, so don't be shy!
1. Get naked and take a good long look at your body. Trace your stretch marks, feel your hip bones poking out, place your hand over your tummy and take a fistful of yourself in. Appreciate your scars and pimples, your uneven,large,or nonexistent breasts. Take pride in your un/shaven, un/cut, fantastically odd private bits. Hold up a mirror to yourself and study your body. Love it.
2. Be Ugly, reclaim words that are used to put you down and shut you up and scream right back at these fascist beauty standard reinforcing scumbags. Give them the finger and tell them to kiss your fat/skinny/somewhere in between ass ‘cause you ain’t got time to waste with their body hating bullshit. and remember, you don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Validate yourself by accepting yourself.
3. Wear clothes that don’t fit, that are too big or too small and show all your “problem areas” that cosmo insists you hide and walk down the street like the fucking fabulous queen you are. Sashay the hate away.
4. Do what YOU want with YOUR body. Shave or don’t, wear makeup or don’t, whatever choice you make is yours to make, and anyone who shames you for your decision can keep it moving. This also means respecting the choices of others, even if they differ from your own.
5. Surround yourself with loving and supportive people. Rid of the toxic bullshit in your life if possible, and immerse yourself in a community that embraces body positivity and diversity.
Bodies are hairy. No matter the gender, your face will have hair and that is more than okay.
Your butthole is going to have some hair too. And maybe your nipples. And your tummy. And where ever else.
Stretch marks. Those are a thing. Everyone gets ‘em. If you don’t, you probably don’t have skin.
Vaginas smell. Every vagina has a scent. Don’t worry about it! (Unless something seems wrong, then go get it checked out! No need to feel embarrassed or ashamed.)
Vaginas come in all different shapes, sizes, colors, flavors. All are beautiful.
Penises come in all different shapes, sizes, colors, flavors. All are beautiful.
You don’t need to shave anything if you don’t want to. It’s tooootally not mandatory.
Sometimes people get butt acne.
You can have a vagina and want short hair and think dresses are just the worst.
You can have a penis and want long hair and think dresses are just the best.
You can wear whatever you want and style your hair however you want.
You can even think whatever the hell you want.
People might tell you that you are a girl because you have a vagina. People might tell you that you are a boy because you have a penis. People will tell you what your gender is. But in reality, you don’t have to be that gender. You don’t have to be either of those genders.
You are what you are and it’s just the worst thing if you try and hide that.
“Fat people who love themselves scare the shit out of people who don’t love themselves. Even fat people who are TRYING to love themselves scare the shit out of people who can’t do the same. We force people to have to look at why they hate their bodies because we are “supposed” to hate ours and we don’t. And sometimes they have no idea what to do with that, so they act like assholes.”
“Of course, this is one of the profound ways in which oppression works—to mire us in body hatred. Homophobia is all about defining queer bodies as wrong, perverse, immoral. Transphobia, about defining trans bodies as unnatural, monstrous, or the product of delusion. Ableism, about defining disabled bodies as broken and tragic. Class warfare, about defining the bodies of workers as expendable. Racism, about defining the bodies of people of color as primitive, exotic, or worthless. Sexism, about defining female bodies as pliable objects. These messages sink beneath our skin.”
it is so horrifying to know how many people actually can not stand the body that they’re in, we are all born in the skin that we are in and that can not change.. unless you want to pay millions to cosmetically change who you are. accept your body, everyone is beautiful! get positive about who you are, we are the biggest critics of ourselves and everyone has flaws, learn to accept your flaws and love yourself <3 xoxoxox
CISCENTRISM, WOW! Don’t presume that everyone can or should love the body they were born with. And how dare you shame people who choose surgery by saying they’re changing who they are? Not everyone chooses surgery for good or positive reasons, but it certainly isn’t up to you to say so. I wish so hard that the body positivity movement would quit it with this trans*phobic crap. There are so many ways to promote loving yourself that don’t involve alienating trans* folks.
“Female toplessness is legal in a lot of places in the US (although not where I live), and I’d be meeting the letter of the law with a couple of Band-aids. But I have a gut feeling that if I go anywhere that there are people—and particularly anywhere there are children—nobody’s going to be too happy about my Band-aids. The enforcement is social; women just don’t go around topless in the US.
It bothers me because it’s unequal, but it also bothers me in its implications: that my body is inherently sexual, and a man’s body isn’t. It feels like men are being viewed through the first-person lens of “it’s nice to feel the sun on my skin, and I don’t mean anything by it” and women are being viewed through the distinctly third-person lens of “it’s inappropriate for me, a heterosexual man, to see her sexy parts.” It ignores the experiences of people who are turned on by male chests and somehow manage to contain themselves when they see one.”
If people could signal boost this I would really appreciate it.
As I have come to love and accept my body after 7 years of disordered eating habits, I have started turning more and more to the body acceptance/fat acceptance community.
And while I love the things I see, and find them informative and uplifting, I dont often see posts about body acceptance in the face of/while recovering from an eating disorder. Especially restrictive disorders.
Id like to do a small-med zine on learning to love and accept your body after years of loathing and abusing it. It can be really hard.
I would really like to get quotes and personal experience stories from people who have recovered, or are in recovery to add to the zine. Anything that has helped you learn to accept and love yourself and your body, problems with it you have overcome, or just stories of why you find it hard but still have hope. Credit of course will be given (unless you specifically state that you would like to remain anonymous).
Please send any thing you would like to contribute to this tumblr, or to my email, wanderingxwondering@yahoo.com, with “body love zine” in the header.
Id like to have the zine put together and ready to distro within the next 2 months.
thanks everyone,
Gryff
I will make myself write something for this if it is the last thing I do.
