An Open Letter To Celebrities: Stop Telling Me To Love My Body
Here is my open letter to celebrities who keep preaching for girl to love their bodies.
Dear Gorgeous Celebrities,
I’m grateful for all your wonderful support of feminism, including the TIMESUP campaign the metoo movement but I’m sorry to stay, I’m starting to get a little bored with your constant posts telling myself (and lots of other women) to be proud of their bodies. But please, let me explain why.
First of all,
I feel undermined when I see all of your stunning bodies all over Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest or pretty much any social media site clothed in small bikinis with captions that empower you. I’m all for female empowerment, but it’s hard to feel that way when you’re posting pictures of yourself in barely anything at all. I get that feminism comes in all forms, but I guess I’m more of a traditionalist and don’t understand how It’s improving equality for women if you’re rolling around in no clothes and taking about how that empowers you – but perhaps that’s just me.
It gets me down that you can talk about being proud of your bodies when they majority of you are stick thin, with defined abs, cellulite-less thighs and a perky bum. Honestly, who wouldn’t be proud of a body like that? In my open letter to celebrities, it’s difficult to be proud of my muffin top, cellulite and bra flab when hardly any of you look like that in the first place, so would you mind not telling me to be proud of a body that I myself will never be proud of? I understand that you must’ve worked really hard to get the body that you have now. You must spend hours in the gym trying to keep yourself in shape, but doesn’t that really contradict what your telling all of the young girls to be proud of? I spend a lot of hours training and exercising and sweating and aching trying to get a body that I will be proud of, but when I turn to Instagram at the end of my workout, I feel incredibly disheartened when I see pictures of you all after your workouts saying how hard you’ve worked and telling me that I don’t have to be skinny to be proud of my body. A lot of you emphasise the fact that you want to be stronger and healthier, mentioning only your body and health but not bringing any other woman into it and honestly, that’s really enlightening and more empowering to me than seeing size zero women after their workout – so I’d like to thank you for that.
I know this probably sounds like the long rant
of someone who likes to scroll through their social media and body shame women for having the “perfect body” but
1. don’t think so low of me
2. to me, everyone has the perfect body (except me).
And I’m sure that a lot of girls feel the same way. I‘m sure that there’s a girl everywhere that looks at a woman with curves and thinks they‘re inadequate, or sees a woman with defined shoulders and thinks the same.
There are notable exceptions who do make me feel good about myself and DO make me want to be proud of my body – Alicia Vikander and her Lara Croft transformation for a example, or Cassey Ho with her constant encouragement throughout her workout videos. Those women show me true empowerment and make me want to be proud of my body. They do it without posting constant photos of themselves in tiny bikinis and that really resonates with me.
In this open letter to celebrities, I’m not saying stop posting beautiful pictures of yourselves because you’re all stunning women, but do you have to tell me to be proud of my body when – until I’m the healthy, smaller waist, muffin top-less, cottage cheese thigh-less – I won’t be? Maybe I’ll feel much more empowered by your posts when I have your body, but until then can you just not?
With regret
(and no regrets),
Elle
