If you haven't heard of Jameela Jamil, please poke your head out from the rock you're living under and listen up because you're going to want to know about the woman who is clapping back at the media's exploitation of women's bodies.
Best known for her role as Tahani Al-Jamil in NBC's hit comedy "The Good Place," Jameela Jamil has been making waves for her unapologetic criticism against the way that the entertainment industry promotes unhealthy and unrealistic standards of beauty. The activist is taking a stand against airbrushing, photoshop, and detox products because of the harmful physical and mental effects they have on women.
Jameela has long been open about her own struggles with body dysmorphia and anorexia in the hopes of inspiring women to challenge the ways society shames women's bodies. After a photo of the Kardashian women with their weights slapped across their bodies emerged on Instagram last year, Jameela decided to channel her rage into launching the #iweigh campaign, an Instagram movement that encourages people to acknowledge the value they have beyond their bodies.
Jameela is relentlessly passionate about using her platform to educate and inspire, frequently calling out brands, advertisers, and products that target women and perpetuate harmful habits and ideals. She recently started a petition that has garnered over 190,000 signatures calling for an end to celebrity-endorsed diet and detox products, stating on the petition's page, "Powder over the internet can't make you look like a celebrity who has a personal trainer, a chef, a surgeon and who uses photoshop." For years, Jameela has seen her skin lightened, her body shrunk, her stretch marks erased ― all to make her an image of what the media thinks she should look like instead of celebrating the beautiful body she has.
She's made me realize just how twisted and corrupt the expectations of women are, how they exist to distract us from living our fullest lives and achieving success. She's helped me see the ways I've internalized and believed the dangerous messages that the media has fed me. How have I never noticed it? Of COURSE the Kardashians are gorgeous ― they have millions of dollars to make them that way. They don't look like that because of some ridiculous "detox tea," and neither will you.
And yet somehow, these celebrities and these brands have convinced us that if we just buy their product, all of our problems will be solved. But there's always another product to buy, there's always another problem with our bodies that we have to fix. (Like, did you know that bleaching your elbows and knees is a thing?) It's an endless, destructive, shameful cycle.
That's what Jameela's fighting to end and that's why we need to join her. She isn't afraid to be loud and call out the media on its bullshit. And just as important, she's not afraid to listen, to keep learning and finding new ways to fight for inclusive change (hence her adoption of the term "feminist-in-progress"). She's fierce, she's outspoken, and she's fearless ― that's what you need to be to start a revolution.
It's criminal the lies we've been sold about our bodies, our capabilities, and our worth and that we continue to buy into them with flash diets and Facetune and waist trainers. Following Jameela has helped me to drown out those invasive voices that tell me to buy, to shrink, to comply, and to be silent. She tells me to fight, to shine, to be loud, and to love every inch of myself exactly the way I am, because self-love is the only way to take back our power and quiet those voices for good.
I'm still learning how to look in the mirror and thank my body rather than criticize it because it takes time to unlearn the patterns of thinking that have been ingrained in me since childhood. But I am going to keep fighting because I deserve the love that I have deprived myself of for so long. Thank you, Jameela, for helping me realize that.
