I am fat.

I have been fat since middle school.

But you know what? I am also beautiful. I am cute and sexy and radiant and gorgeous and confident and lovely and so much more.

While being a beautiful and fat femme might seem contradictory, it really isn’t; you can be both. Sadly, society still excludes fat womxn and femmes (especially fat womxn and femmes of color) from the standard narrative of what ‘should’ be considered beautiful, which is not only incorrect but also harmful.

On that same unfortunate note, so much of our self-worth can be tied to what others believe and say about us, not what we think about ourselves. Self-love isn’t something that fat womxn and femmes are allowed to feel, principally toward our physical bodies. In a world in which female-identifying people are already constantly pressured and judged for their appearance, it becomes even tougher for those not within the ‘average’ size.

Body positivity for fat femmes is constantly bombarded with hate. People comment how because these people are comfortable and confident in their own skin, they’re promoting unhealthy lifestyles.

This, however, couldn’t be any further from the truth. Fat people can, shockingly enough, be healthy. There are a myriad of reasons why they are fat, and firstly, you can’t always tell why, and secondly, fat people shouldn’t have to constantly give out this very personal information to literally justify to others why they exist as they are.

Fat people, by sharing their personal journeys to better caring for and about themselves, are being healthy. Self-love is healthy. When you love yourself, your perspective on life changes - your thoughts about you and others become more positive, and you feel happier and healthier.

Hating yourself or others is so much more mentally and emotionally exhausting than showing your love. Hate becomes such a burden, one that can be hard to shake, that it becomes considerably more unhealthy than the ‘unhealthy lifestyle’ that people assume fat and self-loving, self-confident people are ‘promoting.’

I am proud to call myself fat. I am proud to call myself beautiful. I am proud to call myself fat and beautiful.

Fat is no longer a negative word to me. I know I am fat, but I try not to let that define whether or not I feel good about and especially whether or not I take care of myself in a healthy way. If someone says or thinks that I’m fat, so be it. Again, I am fat. However, I am learning not to associate fatness with ugliness; there are stunning fat womxn and femmes everywhere, and it’s time to recognize that this old, sexist, fatphobic paradigm is wrong.

Before I conclude, I want to turn my attention to all of the other fat womxn and femmes out there:

If you’re reading this and in case no one has told you this today: you are beautiful.

If you have thick thighs, you are beautiful. If you have wide hips, you are beautiful. If you have a large butt, you are beautiful. If you have a soft belly, you are beautiful. If you have a saggy chest, you are beautiful. If you have big arms, you are beautiful. If you have a double chin and chubby cheeks, you are beautiful.

If you have plump ankles and wrists, cellulite, stretch marks, and/or anything else you feel self-conscious about, you are beautiful.

You may not feel this way now, but please, tell this to yourself every day. You will start to believe it the more you say it, and one day, you won’t even have to consciously do this. You will become confident, happy, motivated, and comfortable with the ornate, unique, and breathtaking temple you inhabit, and it will benefit you greatly.