This Is My Body, Deal With It!
October 24, 2012.
"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. This is my body. Not yours. MINE. Meaning the choices I make about it, are none of your f*cking business. Meaning my size, IS NONE OF YOUR F*CKING BUSINESS."-Stella Boonshoft
This Is My Body, Deal With It!
Stella Boonshoft. is a young plus-sized woman who has been briefly documenting her struggles with being overweight, PCOS, and self-acceptance on her Tumblr blog (The Body Love). Awkward and uncomfortable in her own body, Stella began to self-medicate excessively at a very young age in an effort to escape her poor self-image and the years of bulling she had endured.
"I got drunk and got high, I got sloppy and free - I was able to look at others with disdain and use my judgement against them to make myself feel better." She wrote on her body love blog. For several years, Stella went to parties, self-medicated, but moved as little as possible, daring not to dance.
At the young age of 15, Stella's parents intervened and got her the help she so desperately needed to obtain sobriety and self-love. Once sober, she was dragged to her first sober dance party where she was in awe of what she saw. "People young, old, fat, thin, male, female - what have you, were stone cold sober and dancing their f****** faces off." A few dances later, sober Stella was dancing like no one was watching and loving every minute of it. She had come to accept herself, love herself, and her self-confidence radiated and drew people in.
Recently, Stella met a photographer named Brandon, founder of the photo blog, Humans of New York. She asked to take his picture and he then took a photo of her and asked her what her story was. Stella told him about her blog and the self-portrait she posted of herself in her underwear and bra. Brandon was really interested and mentioned that he wanted to put Stella up on his blog. She was so excited. However, excitement soon turned in to shock when she found that Brandon had not posted the clothed photo he had taken of her. Instead, he had posted her underwear clad self-portrait on his organizations Facebook page.
Stella was in tears, in a panic. She wanted to get the message out there to young women about self-acceptance and self-love, but this is not how she had expected to do it. Certainly not with thousands of people looking at her half naked body. She considered taking down her blog and asking Brandon to delete her photo. Although most comments on the photo were supportive and kind, Stella found it easy to focus on the negative. "IT’S WAYYYYY EASIER, however, to focus on the smaller percentage of negative a******* rather than the overwhelming love." she wrote on her blog. Stella decided to leave her blog and self-portrait up in hopes to make a difference in the world. It was her desire to reach out to other young women who also had body image issues, and a lack of self-confidence.
Now, her photo has gone viral and has received over 566,000 likes and 25,700 plus shares on Brandon's Facebook page. She has quite innocently created a beautiful firestorm. She has started the conversation. She is proving that beauty, self-awareness, and self-confidence comes in all shapes and sizes. And she has found a new beginning. She and her friend Brandon are reinventing her blog.
"I’m hoping it will turn the focus off of me, and onto a much larger issue. I want this blog to turn into something about YOU, not me." She wrote in her most recent post.
"My dream is to go back to my middle school, where all my body image issues began, and work with young girls on the issues of self-esteem, body image, sizeism, and bullying," Stella added in a follow up post on the Humans of New York photo blog. "I want to give these girls something I never knew, which was that your body does not define who you are as a person. To people who judge people on their size, weight, pants size or health - shame on you. No one is the authority on beauty, and everyone has a different road to trudge to happy destiny."
To read more of Stella's Body Love Blog click here.
An excerpt from Stella's blog after posting her self-portrait picture in her black underwear:
"If my big belly and fat arms and stretch marks and thick thighs offend you, then that’s okay. I’m not going to hide my body and my being to benefit your delicate sensitivities.
This picture is for the strange man at my nanny’s church who told me my belly was too big when I was five.
This picture is for my horseback riding trainer telling me I was too fat when I was nine.
This picture is for the girl from summer camp who told me I’d be really pretty if I just lost a few pounds.
This picture is for all the f****** stupid advertising agents who are selling us cream to get rid of our stretch marks, a perfectly normal thing most people have. (I got mine during puberty)
This picture is for the boy at the party who told me I looked like a beached whale.
This picture is for Emily from middle school, who bullied me incessantly, made mocking videos about me, sent me nasty emails, and called me “lard”. She made me feel like I didn’t deserve to exist. Just because I happened to be bigger than her. I was 12. And she continued to bully me via social media into high school.
MOST OF ALL, 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.
"Our bodies are all beautiful because they are vessels for our souls. They allow us to feel, express, hurt, love, laugh, cry, and most importantly create change in the world."-Stella Boonshoft