Jameela Jamil, actress of the popular Netflix series The Good Place, woke up on her 32nd birthday to be confronted with a toxic message that got her thinking about self-image. Whilst scrolling through her Instagram, she came across a post (which has since been taken down – of course – due to backlash) featuring the Kardashian/Jenner Klan and their supposed weights. Jamil was horrified!
Source: Jameela Jamil
The post was asking its followers what their thoughts were on the weights of the Kardashian/Jenner members and asking them to identify their weight by comparison. Jamil snapped and shared the post on her account with the following message:
“WHO CARES? What kind of crazed toxic nonsense is this? What is this post trying to achieve other than to induce anxiety into young women about something so entirely irrelevant? What are we teaching women about our value? Can it be measured using a metric system? Why do so many posts like this exist on social media? How is anyone supposed to get through the fucking day happy with themselves when we are given such unreasonable and shallow goals to achieve, falling short of which, no matter who we are, what we do, how many lives we save, how many children we raise, how many people’s lives we touch, we are not worth anything.”
Jamil decided she had seen enough of this on social media that she implemented her own campaign of self-worth online by creating an “I weigh” meme. Rather than assigning a numeric value to her weight, she took the opportunity to identify the milestones she has achieved as a way of signifying the importance of what she has to offer as an individual and not by her shape or size. Posting it to Twitter, her post created vast momentum online as other social media users responded to her message, creating their own memes. None of the responses were posed, filtered, featured heavy make-up or contouring. No one was sucked, tucked and strategically placing themselves to seem different to what they are– just true and authentic versions of readers who wanted to acknowledge what it was they were proud of in their lives.
Source: Jamil’s message
For me as a reader and body image advocate, it was enlightening to see such a simple and yet powerful message. Right now, in such an important place in history where people who have felt unheard are finally being given a chance to speak, it’s nice to see there is movement towards positive self-esteem and body image. Whilst Jamil yes is technically a celebrity, she has implemented a space for others to be able to start this conversation in a non-threatening and approachable manner. And so with that, I took on the challenge to wrangle in my lovely coworkers at BodyMatters to follow this movement. I am very lucky to have such a supportive group of women (and men – Hi Tim!) on our team who are there to celebrate each other’s milestones along the way. We have been through many celebrations within our team, including marriages, babies, career milestones and everything in between. And with that, we wanted to celebrate those things with our readers by joining the “I weigh” movement.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, the BodyMatters team…
