Forget what you’ve heard about what makes a body worthy of a bikini. All it takes is some self-love and confidence!
As a kid growing up in the late ’90s, I constantly felt self-conscious about my body. Diet commercials played 24-7 and trendy workout videotapes were in every household. It seemed no one around me was happy with their body the way it was, which taught me that there must be something wrong with my own body. Specifically, I was concerned about my round belly. I fantasized about waking up with a flat stomach and washboard abs à la Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. By 13, I was avoiding all my favourite snacks and doing stomach crunches in my bedroom every evening. I felt desperate to be thin. I criticized myself for years, when in fact, there wasn’t anything wrong with me. What was wrong was the message society was sending me: because I wasn’t a size 0, I wasn’t worthy of feeling beautiful or sexy.
It wasn’t until I was 25 that I even considered wearing a bikini in public, and that was all thanks to body-positive influencer Gabi Gregg, aka Gabi Fresh, who coined the term “fatkini.” I remember seeing one of her blog posts, featuring pictures of her in a beautiful retro-style bikini. I was in awe of how gorgeous she looked and thought about how liberating it would feel to bare my own belly in public. So when I was packing for a family vacation to Grenada, I shoved my first bikini into my luggage. I liked how I looked in it when I tried it on at the store. But when we arrived at our vacation rental, the idea of wearing it out in public suddenly felt very daunting. I was filled with hesitation. What if people stare? What if someone insults my body and my confidence comes crashing down?
I know I’m not alone in how I felt at that moment. According to a study done by Gillette Venus, one third of Canadian women feel uncomfortable being in swimwear in public* and 79 per cent of Canadian women have avoided swimwear due to…
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