SELF-LOVE

Body Positive

A Joyous Rebellion

By Marissa Heyl Illustrations by Diane Pereira aka Red Milk Crone

A bevy of curvy

women with candy-colored hair and chic cat’s-eye shades revel in the sun at a jubilant poolside soiree, skin rolls out. They’re dancing without abandon. These women are gloriously living in their bodies and enjoying life, free from judgment. It’s a scene of pure jubilation from Aidy Bryant’s “Shrill” in which her character, Annie, attends a “Fat Girl Pool Party.” Though self-conscious about wearing a swimsuit in public, she eventually accepts the invitation. We see her liberated, gleefully dancing, swimming and doing handstands in the pool as if releasing her inner child. I’ve watched this scene many times, and it always brings tears — a liberation of a group of women who, like myself, have avoided the pool since puberty.

But I did spend way too much time and money on bullshit. Hair extensions that have resembled a rodent and scared the mess out of my partner when not worn. Push-up bras that lie, thongs that dig so much they create a new crack, the list goes on. All the crazy nonsense that we women spend time and money on in pursuit of being accepted.”

As someone who has studied media and is no stranger to fat-shaming, the trends toward body positivity in modern culture is liberating. This representation is incredibly important, transformative and relatively new, challenging a deeply ingrained history that has kept women paralyzed in self-loathing and shame for generations.

A Curvy Casper

My career, and really my entire life, has been all about women. Whether it’s advocating for human rights, supporting local artists or designing clothes made by global artisans, I relish working with women. I attribute my feminism to my boss (and sometimes bulldozer) of a mother. A high school government teacher, she embodied a nobullshit, women-can-do-anything attitude that she instilled in me from an early stage.

My mom is a curvy woman who vacillates between various diets and has been known to stock up on sparsely used home workout equipment. She desperately wanted me to grow up with an athletic practice so that I would be strong, less vulnerable to the fat-shaming she and her siblings endured. She put me in competitive gymnastics at the age of 4, a sport that comprised much of my childhood. I will say it’s better than ballet in the body-shaming arena, but I did get white-shamed (if that’s a thing) by my coach. A white guy himself, albeit one who could tan easily, he called me “Casper” and would laugh at how pale I was. It created a strange shame in me that I carried through high school when I “retired.”

100% Skin Deep

That pasty skin-shame cloud lingered as a cheerleader in middle and high school, where I remember everyone wanting to go to the tanning bed before a big game. My squad was majority white, and I was by far the palest cheerleader. I was wise enough not to subject myself to cancer and premature wrinkles by tanning, but I still obsessively covered myself in the odd-smelling orangey mess that was ‘90s self-tanner. I wanted to appear less ghostly.

At one pep rally, I thrust myself high in the air doing a backflip (called an “X out”). It involved me straddling my legs midair to create an explosive visual. I felt so proud with the crowd cheering me on, but in the background, I heard a guy yell, “Hey, put some damn pants on.” It struck me and created a self-consciousness in me for the rest of the rally when I should have been concentrating on our routine. To remember that so many years later shows how deep those wounds can be from one dumb-ass boy.

Thankfully, I didn’t fall into destructive habits like eating disorders and body dysmorphia, which many women do. But I spent too much time and money on bullshit like hair extensions that resembled a rodent and scared the mess out of my partner when not worn, push-up bras that lie, thongs that dig so much they create a new crack, the list goes on. All the crazy nonsense that we women spend time and money on in pursuit of acceptance. Aidy Bryant’s character calls this the “mind prison” that every woman has been programmed to believe.

I’ve wasted so much time, so much energy and money…for what? I’m fat, ya know? Every magazine, commercial and weird targeted ad that wants me to burn my fat off…I could be a nutritionist by now. I’ve been training for it since the fourth grade.

Most who identify as a woman have a story like this. That’s no coincidence — it’s misogyny and capitalism.

There is so much power when women connect in a group; it’s where the magic lives. When women gather, the clouds of shame lift and authentic connection flourishes.”

Women have been objectified and sexualized in the media from time immemorial. While some advertisements exploit women’s sexuality to sell men’s products, others target women, telling us to buy things to make us whole. That we aren’t enough. Growing up on a steady diet of ‘90s fashion magazines, I received the same message over and over — that my value as a woman was tied up in how attractive I am to men. It is not just limiting but dehumanizing, and the scars of body shame run deep.

Over the past 10 years, I’ve sold hundreds of dresses to women of all shapes and sizes from my fair-trade label Symbology. Some are full-figured and love feeling sexy in a revealing dress; others are skinny and incredibly selfconscious.

It was at Etico, my sustainable collective on Magnolia Avenue (now closed), that my “aha moment” struck me. A young woman ran out of my store crying because she had gained five pounds during COVID. She was ashamed of her supposed “belly bump.” I knew that no matter how flattering the dress was, if she hated her body, we weren’t going to get anywhere. We had to get to the root of it. To appreciate and love our bodies and unlearn all the self-hating BS we’ve been taught our whole lives.