14 DAY TRIAL // Much like the “fatkini” movement, Stella Boonshoft of The Body Love Blog is also striving to prove to the entire world that beauty isn’t conditioned by weight and that big too can be just as beautiful, if not actually more so, as size 0.
Just recently, Stella became an Internet star after a photo of herself in underwear (with her consent) was posted to Facebook, where it served as a conversation starter on how we define beauty today and how it’s almost always linked to weight.
Stella initially posted the photo on her personal blog, thinking that only her friends and some loyal readers would see it.
Though she did not expect it to go viral, her message was one that went out to the world at large.
“Warning: 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. Well I’m not going to stand for that,” Stella wrote in her original post, which you can view here, together with the photo that started all this.
“This is my body. Not yours. MINE. Meaning the choices I make about it, are none of your [expletive]-ing business. Meaning my size IS NONE OF YOUR [expletive]-ING BUSINESS,” she went on to say.
She also dedicated the photo to all those who bullied or made her feel less worthy because she was fat in her earlier years, before concluding with the same empowering message: her weight should be no one’s problem but her own.
“This picture is for me. For the girl who hated her body so much she took extreme measures to try to change it. Who cried for hours over the fact she would never be thin. Who was teased and tormented and hurt just for being who she was. I’m so over that. THIS IS MY BODY, DEAL WITH IT,” she said.
Right after this, her photo emerged online and, she says in another post on her blog, her first reaction was to have it taken down.
She admits that she’d finally got what she wanted and was feeling terrified because of it. However, it didn’t take long before she realized that getting all this exposure was actually a good thing for her “cause,” her fight against sizeism.
“I didn’t do this for attention or sympathy. I have people in my real life who help me with anything I need, I don’t need to look to strangers for that. I am doing what I’m doing in the hopes I can make a difference in a world that has so much cruelty,” Stella writes.
“But also know that I am human. I have my bad days. Maybe I will change my mind and decide I don’t want to be in the public eye, and everyone will forget about me in about 2 seconds. But I hope I continue to gain strength from this experience, and get the chance to tell my story at a widespread level,” the blogger further says.
She’s doing just that, as the thousands who have taken online to voice their support confirm.