I recently found out that the body positivity movement I’ve been waiting for all of my adult life is for everyone except me–at least according to those closest to me.

It was supposed to be a simple photo celebrating me on my birthday.

I wanted it to be black and white. Sexy but tasteful.  Classy but a little naughty.  I mean why not?  I am after all grown-years-old.

I’d been admiring similar photos I’d seen in magazines and on social media. You know the kind of photos that showed a lot of skin but not everything.

Sensual.

Serena Williams’ Vanity Cover during her pregnancy, singer Lizzo’s Cuz I Love You album cover, and yoga teacher and body positivity advocate and writer Jessamyn Stanley, who made a name for herself through her Instagram posts showing her doing yoga as a “plus-size woman of color,” who self-identifies as a “fat femme” and “queer femme” were just a few of my inspirations.

And let me tell you, building up the nerve to take the photo and then share it on social media was not something I arrived at with ease.  This was years in the making.

I grew up being told I was fat when I wasn’t so I developed a complex early on about my weight.  That complex actually led to me having an eating disorder, being overweight and obese just about my entire life.

I grew up during the olden days when a woman’s beauty was directly correlated with her weight.  The skinnier you were the more beautiful you were.  That was the message seen by young girls like me on television, in movies, magazines, and on billboards. 

And back in those olden days, modesty was actually seen as a virtue and something to be sought after and celebrated in women. I know it’s hard to believe–but it’s true and I ain’t that old so it wasn’t that long ago.

Being openly proud of being fat, plus-sized, thick, or big-boned was not a thing back in the day.  So much so, that I remember not so fondly that shopping in the mall for plus-sized women’s clothing often involved a variety of mumus in different patterns and colors.  

But that was then and this is now and now I am trying to shake off all of the years of mental and physical torture I put myself through for not being a certain size.  In some ways, I also feel like I am breaking free from a form of Stockholm syndrome.  It’s not easy to unlearn what you’ve been conditioned to accept your entire life as the way it is.

So when I started to notice this body positivity trend some years ago involving plus-sized women challenging unrealistic feminine beauty standards in the media, I perked up.

Around the same time, I had also started noticing a plethora of new clothing companies that specialized in non-mumu clothing for plus-sized women giving me and millions of others an opportunity to wear more stylish clothing like our skinnier counterparts. Shout out to Eloquii, Universal Standard, and M.M. LaFleur.

My time had come–or so I thought, and I was here for it.

In reality, it would still take me another 8 years to arrive at the point in my life where I would allow myself to be photographed semi-nude and then post it on social media–all 200 and something pounds of me.

But I finally got there.  After a few deaths of people close to me, a hysterectomy and a breast cancer scare, I came to the realization that no matter what weight I am, it is what it is and I didn’t want to waste another 40 years of my life telling myself I’d do something when I lost weight.

I was told life is not a dress rehearsal.  I believe that to be 100 percent true.

The caption was simple.

The beautiful thing about growing older is you just don’t give a fuck.

The photo, I thought at least, was beautiful, and apparently so did the hundreds of other people who “liked it” on social media.

And just to be clear–if no one had liked the photo on social media, I was still okay with my photo. I didn’t post it for likes, I posted it for me to show how far I’d come and to stake my claim in this body positivity movement.

I felt empowered.  I was challenging how society views not only the bodies of plus-sized women but plus-sized Black women.

And while I thought I didn’t give a fuck about what the trolls had to say–it wasn’t the trolls whose comments convinced me to delete my photo.  It was my friends.

One called me a porn star and said my career was ruined.  Another told me that a woman in my position shouldn’t post photos like that.  That it is inappropriate. Others eluded to me working in politics and having a photo like that on my social media.

I am not a porn star.

If my career is ruined because I displayed some femininity, sexuality, independence, and empowerment in posting a photo on social media, it’s time for a new career.

A woman in my position should be allowed to live her life authentically–even if that means posting one photo on social media in a way that she’s never been seen before.

Don’t get me started on the double standards that exist in this world for women no matter what industry they work in but you can quadruple that for Black women (hey Janet Jackson!).

If I ever decide to run for higher office and someone doesn’t want to vote for me or hire me because I posted a photo once showing my sexuality–keep that vote, keep that job.  I don’t want it.

I can hold my own and I stand by the photo that I posted.  

The only reason I took it down is that those closest to me browbeat me so bad on my birthday about it that it actually depressed me more than anything else.  I got more love for my photo from absolute strangers on the internet who didn’t know me or my struggle than I did from my own friends.

It’s 2020.  And while I’m not ready to hit up a nude beach or just let it all hang out–on occasion, I think it’s entirely appropriate and my right to continue exploring and sharing my body as I see fit. Add to that, I reversed course during this coronavirus quarantine and went from gaining weight to losing weight which is something else I am extremely proud of as that was no easy feat.

My body positivity means enjoying the body I have and not beating myself up over my weight or the changes that happen naturally due to aging. I am shedding all of those unrealistic body standards one day at a time. I am not shedding my goals of losing weight, just the pressure of how much and doing so in a certain amount of time.

I wouldn’t say I am proud of being fat–far from it.  What I would say is that today I am comfortable in my skin and with the weight I am.  Unlike Millennials and Generation Z,  for Generation X women, that’s something many of us actually had to learn how to do.  

In the end, I don’t regret posting the photo.  

If anything, I regret letting my friends make me feel so low and bad about it that I took it down when I was really proud of it and myself for having the courage to post it.

This whole experience has shown me that I am going to have to start a finsta Instagram account that’s a more private space personally authentic to me and is a no-judgment zone where I can post whatever the hell kind of photos I want to.  😆