Start a revolution. Don't hate your body.

This is wall graffiti from one of my favorite bars in downtown Asheville, The Vault (home of $3 glasses of wine on Wednesdays, yeaaaaaahhhh!).

I'm posting it because it's a sentiment I've been feeling more and more lately. I fell down the Pinterest rabbit hole two weekends ago, and while I really enjoy the service, I've found myself really depressed by the amount of thinspo people I am following are posting.

Thinspo (or thinspiration), for the uneducated in internets feminism and eating disorder awareness, consists of pictures of incredibly thin women that are nearly always accompanied by "motivational" commentary like "Gotta get in shape!" or "Nothing tastes as good as thin feels!" I find it all incredibly depressing.

First, I don't approve of body-shaming, and that includes when people hate on their own bodies. That so many people I know are that down on the way they look is pretty disheartening to me. I don't think my friends are ugly or disgusting, and it hurts me to see them say that about themselves.

Second, I hate that I live in a culture in which so much of a woman's social worth is predicated upon how she looks and how much she weighs. Even though it's a system that benefits me most of the time, I still hate it because I see the way it chews up and spits out so many people I care about. I have more friends with eating disorders than I can shake a stick at, many more who fall into the somewhat-milder-but-nevertheless-devastating category of suffering from disordered eating, and still more who think that their lives would be so much better if only they were thinner, or prettier, or whatever.

I hate the way it makes me feel, too. I have better self-esteem than the vast majority of other women I know, and I still feel beaten down about my appearance and my weight sometimes. Some days, it's like a constant barrage of "You're not good enough," and my inner feministy whatever isn't always strong enough to drown it out.

As such, I refuse to feed it. I'm not going to post thinspo or diet tips or punishing exercise regimes or anything else that could be construed as endorsing the totally fucked up attitude that American society has towards women's bodies. I can't stop other people from posting it, but I'm not going to look at it; I am unfollowing any boards that are tagged as being about that subject matter. Life is too short to spend obsessing about other peoples' bodies while hating my own.