“I feel sexy because of my personality and charisma.” In her latest video, Helen Anderson explains why she is over people judging her body.
In her Don’t Judge My Body video,Helen opens up about about a topic which she says has been “chipping away, playing on my mind for a while”. The topic? Sharing her experience about the judgement she has received for her body, including how it impacts her career, and working with brands as a content creator.
She dubs herself a “middle girl” (the currently non-existent middle ground between skinny and plus-size), and speaks about how, when she was growing up, she didn’t really give the size of her body a second thought. She also mentions that her love for herself came from her personality, charisma, and outlook on life, and that her body is not the “be-all and end-all”.
In fact, it wasn’t until she started taking outfit photos for her blog that she started receiving comments about her body, with people asking her how she manages to feel so confident. While it may have been meant as a compliment, as confidence in your own skin is a goal that many of us struggle with, it caused Helen to look at her body differently.
She shares that this made her feel that “because of my size, I kind of had to go down the body confidence route and address it and talk about it”. Opening up further, she says that “anything above a size six to eight, in the online world or the media, you’re kind of deemed as ‘plus’ or ‘thick’ or ‘curvy’ or you’re about body confidence and have need to talk about it and that’s your thing”.
She doesn’t think that this is fair, and we have to say we agree. As she says, “people should have a choice in what they represent”. No-one should feel like they need to be a spokesperson for a certain topic!
Helen also shares her experience of being approached by brands who want to work with her simply because of her size, which would again be making her a plus size “spokesperson”, something she never set out to achieve.
During the video, she focuses on the importance of normalising different body shapes and sizes, and taking away labels such as “plus size”, saying: “I think everyone should be classed as normal.” As she explains, the more you highlight an issue, the more it can stand out.
While we do think some issues need to be pointed out, on this occasion, we have to agree with Helen. Categorising people based on their body shapes does more harm than good in our opinion, and can even cause eating disorders and confidence issues.
However, that doesn’t mean Helen is against people speaking about body confidence if they want to. She appreciates what the movement is trying to do – however, she “really hope[s] it gets to the point where we won’t really need a body confidence movement anymore because we’re just accepted and not highlighted for being different”. Can we get an amen for that?!
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