Stella Boonshoft Goes Viral With Body Love Blog and Anti-Bullying Message
Photo credit: Stella Boonshoft
Stella’s post, which got over 80,000 shares and 2.4 million views on Facebook, also featured the following text: “My body must be a revolution. Picture might be considered obscene because subject is not thin. And we all know that only skinny people can show their stomachs and celebrate themselves. I am not going to stand for that. This is my body, not yours. MINE.”
Stella also took part in the Humans of New York project, a collection of street portraits by artist Brandon Stanton. At first, he used a clothed pic of Stella – but later used her bikini shot. At first, she was embarrassed, but then realized it was the right thing to do to further her fight against sizeism and anti-bullying.
“I think people are cruel because they are uncomfortable seeing an image of people who are not thin,” Stella said on the TODAY show. “I found that after years of struggling with my body image that really there was no way to justify the bullying as a child and as a teen.”
“It took a lot of years of soul searching to decide this isn’t right,” she continued. “I finally came to a place where I was really happy with the way that I looked. I wanted to leave a message to the bullies who tormented me.”
Hats off to Stella, who is incredibly brave for baring all to champion her message. We’re all inundated with images of super-thin models – and eventually this makes us think that it’s right to look this way and wrong to look any other way. Research shows that 8 out of 10 women will be dissatisfied with their reflection, and more than half may see a distorted image. And it’s getting even harder to achieve the media’s beauty standards: 25 years ago, top models and beauty queens weighed only 8% less than the average woman; now they weigh 23% less.
People of all shapes and sizes deserve our respect. There is not just one way to be!
