By: Genevieve Dietzel
Seven years ago, a ten-year-old girl sat in front of her mirror and grabbed the excess fat on her body that she swore was the sole reason she had very few friends and maintained that these extra pounds made her ugly. She would spend the next six years struggling with Anorexia and battling the physical effects the disorder took on her body. She spent 3 months in eating disorder clinics and made several trips to different psychiatric wards because the “fat”–that, frankly, was never even there–made her wish that her life was over. She spent the last year advocating for body positivity on various social media outlets because she knew how much it would have helped her if she saw all body types being appreciated when she first joined Twitter and Tumblr at 12, rather than strictly skin-and-bones.
The Body Positivity movement is so important in today’s society because teenagers today have grown into a toxic mindset that you must fit a certain size to be beautiful. If you were thin, you had to be supermodel thin. If you were thick, you had to have the perfect hour glass figure. The girls who fell between thin and thick were forgotten and the girls who society considered “fat”, many people often deemed undesirable, gross, and ugly. The Body Positivity movement serves to include ALL body types, from supermodel thin to fat. It also serves to prove that “fat” is not an insult; that fat is beautiful. Society has groomed women from a young age to fear being above a size 8. It has groomed men to fear being anything but muscular with a defined, chiseled jaw and washboard abs, but the fact is that these are both completely ridiculous standards for the typical modern American. Unlearning this problematic “I must be a double zero” mindset has helped me grow so much in my recovery.
I am 5’8 and have been since I was 14. When I was 14, I weighed about 100 pounds and I swore that I was disgustingly fat, despite that you could count my ribs. After deciding that I did, in fact, deserve to live a healthy, happy life, I worked really hard to recover from my eating disorder, which would officially happen when I was 16. I went to high school with the plus-sized model Barbie Ferreira, who helped me see that I did not need to be a double zero to be beautiful. She is now one of the many faces of the body positivity movement and I am so proud to say that she is one of my main motivations to stay recovered. She made me, and so many other girls, realize how beautiful they were, regardless of their size. Since becoming more body positive and spreading more positive vibes, the world has embraced me with open arms, as both a writer and an actor. I approached everything I successfully pursued with the confidence the Body Positivity movement has given me. I have published a book and have worked with Tony Award winning composers because I refused to believe that I was not good enough or pretty enough to make something of myself. The Body Positivity movement gave me that motivation, confidence, and determination. In terms of helping people love themselves, there has yet to be a more influential movement, and I am glad to see it gaining the momentum it needs. I do not want my daughter to be grabbing her fat at ten-years-old and restricting her food intake until she almost kills herself because she hates what she sees in the mirror because she does not think she is pretty enough to live a happy life. I want my children’s generation to be able to live in a more accepting, more positive society and the Body Positivity movement propels society to that progression. Everyone deserves to live happily and healthily in their skin and the Body Positivity movement is integral in making that a very real possibility.
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