Love Island Australia's Phoebe Thompson has reposted a photo, which almost jeopardized her job and relationship.
She posted the photo again yesterday, to encourage women to embrace their bodies and to stress that "being naked is completely normal."
In the caption to the photograph, which sees Thompson posing naked with a VB bottle, she revealed how she was left "ashamed" after the photo started making the rounds on social media.
"This photo was taken by a photographer friend of mine many years ago. I loved her work because she had an incredible talent for catching the naked female form in the most beautiful way.. I believe that being naked is completely normal/ healthy shameless. Nudity does not equal promiscuous behaviour nor does being fully clothed equal modesty...Female empowerment comes in All shapes and sizes and whether you’re a nun or a sex worker you most certainly deserve respect, love and to feel safe [sic]," she wrote.
"This photo actually ended up going viral over social media which lead to a lot of backlash and judgement! My boyfriend at the time said I wasn’t “wife material”. I was called Into NUMEROUS meetings with HR who said I was unfit to be working for their company if my body was going to exposed on the internet. I generally ended up feeling ashamed of myself and my body. I ended up deleting Instagram for awhile then came back and went on private until I was forced to go off private when I did love island [sic]."
Thomspon continued: "Years later I’ve realised that no matter what you do as a women you’ll never win, we learn from a very young age that if you’re not hot, pretty, fertile, Fuckable you hold no value and the biggest achievement in life is to get married...they want us to be virgins but also porn stars... be a lady, bleach your asshole, be skinny but not too skinny, be curvy but not fat, remove all the hair from your body, have flawless skin, don’t talk about your period it’s gross, eat pizza drink beer, have a small waist, only eat salad, don’t eat at all, put some clothes on your distracting the boys, take your clothes off, but what was she wearing when it happened, grow your booty but slim your thighs, vegan, gluten free, keto, paleo, green juice, skinny tea, intermittent fasting..... moral of the story is I love this photo don’t let anyone dim your light to validate their own insecurities or small mindedness it’s hard enough being female just do what makes you happy! [sic]."
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