All of my life I have been told either directly or indirectly to shrink myself or to lose weight. Our modern culture has this obsession with being your smallest self because then you are happy, beautiful, and can finally be accepted by society.

This idea of being small or losing weight has plagued my life since I was a little girl. I can remember in Elementary school I would not wear shorts or skirts because a classmate of mine said I had whale legs. Looking back on this that insult it makes no sense not only because whales do not have legs but because my legs are mine and I think they are amazing. They have let me run and play and just have fun, so why did I hate them because of a single remark?

This moment started my journey of weight loss. In middle school, I would eat only healthy food so my friends would not call me fat, or I would not eat at all so they would not judge my food. Middle school I think for all people sucks, but for me, middle school was where I was taught the misconception that skinny equaled beautiful.

My friends would tell me if I liked a boy or if I talked to anyone new that they never like a "bigger girl" like me or that I didn't have the "look" to be there friend. This crushed my heart. This idea of people not liking me because of my size followed me like a ghost. Whenever I got overlooked. mad fun of, ignored or rejected I thought it was because of my weight. Even in high school, I had a girl tell me to cover up because nobody wants to see fat since it is discussing. I had this misconception that because of my weight I had to keep myself hidden.

These are only a few of the many instances that caused me to hate my body for so many years until I came across a TedTalk. In the TedTalk, the women speak of how she personally became body positive. This felt as if she was talking only to me and I began to research more about this idea of body positivity. Her phrase "Be a rebel and love your fat body" resonated with me.

Through body positivity, I have found amazing women like Michelle Elman and Megan Jayne Crabbe who are body positive influencers on Instagram. These women have helped me to find out that it is okay to take up space. They have shared tips on how to deal with the way society treats people like me and they taught me that the things I felt were not crazy. Other people around the globe have been in my shoes and I could learn from them. Being fat and beautiful is the reality and I am a living example of that truth. The people who tell you that being fat meant you are ugly are wrong !!!

Fat is just a descriptor and it means nothing negative, but our society tries to put down women like me for the way our bodies look. The negative connotation with that word has drifted away over the past months for me because I like other women have reclaimed that word for ourselves. This movement of body positivity has allowed me to step out of the shadows and into the light.

Stop trying to shrink yourself and just love your beautiful self no matter what you look like because you are beautiful. This world may try to tell you otherwise, but join the rebels and love your gorgeous body in the state it is in. We all deserve to take our lives back and stop trying to shrink.