With much of society's conception of beauty being focused on the number that women see on the scales, it's about time that we see a backlash. After all, someone's weight should not be used to determine whether they are deemed "acceptable", and thankfully, the chatter around this subject has been changing in recent years, albeit slowly.
There have been more and more body positivity activists taking to platforms such as Instagram and Twitter to showcase alternate conceptions of what is considered "attractive", and several celebrities have been lending their faces to such movements too. Case in point: erstwhile presenter and The Good Place star, Jameela Jamil.
Jamil has been an increasingly outspoken advocate of body positivity, and is often of the first to call out the likes of the Kardashians for promoting potentially harmful ideals to young, impressionable women. Earlier this year, she slammed Kim Kardashian for advertising appetite suppressing lollipops on Instagram.
"It is morally dubious to push this messaging and these products so people will buy them to get a face and body that you got with personal trainers, starvation, juice fasts, Facetune and surgery," she wrote. "Women are deserving of more priorities than this shallow nonsense. We are smart, strong, interesting, funny, survivors, mothers, friends and human bloody beings. Times up on women upholding the patriarchal toxicity dragging us down."
Instead of fixating on your weight - a number which fluctuates daily according to how you choose to nourish yourself - Jamil has been imploring her audience, and women writ large, to consider all the other worthwhile things that make up who they are. The movement is called "I Weigh".
Now, with over 100,000 followers, the "I Weigh" Instagram account asks women to share photographs of themselves with annotations describing what they really "weigh", to build a community of individuals that "feel valuable and see how amazing we are, and [to] look beyond the flesh on our bones."
Here are just a few inspirational women who have been featured on the page:
Since then, a number of celebrities have joined the campaign, including Kristen Bell and Emmy Rossum.
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So, the next time you think about hopping on the scales, maybe take a minute to consider how much you really "weigh" when it comes to the important stuff - like your work, family, friends and hobbies. I'm sure you'll find that the resulting number is much higher than you expected - and isn't that a great thing?