00:00When I was growing up, I was ashamed of my body.
00:02I would internalize the images of celebrities on magazine covers and in movies and thought
00:07that that was the standard of beauty I should aspire towards.
00:10It's taken me a very long time to be comfortable in my own skin.
00:13And I'd be lying if I said I was 100% confident with the way I look all the time.
00:18But seeing more diverse bodies in the media has helped me come to love my own.
00:22And for a lot of people, the body positivity movement has encouraged them to embrace their
00:26own shapes too.
00:27But every person's journey is different.
00:29So how has this movement impacted others?
00:32And where does it fall short?
00:34My friend Jordan has dealt with body shaming her whole life.
00:37And people often make assumptions about her health based off of her appearance.
00:41But what does it actually mean to look healthy?
00:43I have had a really complicated journey with my body as something that I love and honor
00:52and respect.
00:53When I was like eight years old, my doctor put me on Weight Watchers, which you'd think
00:58is, you know, not an appropriate decision for a pediatrician to make.
01:02It just made me really not respect my body as a thing that I could be in.
01:07For my entire adolescence, essentially, I was trying to fix my body.
01:11And then I had an ex who kind of introduced me to, like, the concept of body positivity when
01:18I was, like, 16.
01:20They were like, Jordan, you know, you don't have to, like, always be dieting.
01:24And I was like, what?
01:25I kind of made a decision that I wasn't going to diet anymore and I wasn't going to feed
01:30into that culture of hating myself and, like, paying people to help me hate myself.
01:36I can just like myself the way I am.
01:39That also had a lot to do with, like, the prevalence of fat acceptance as, like, a separate
01:44part of the body positivity movement that I think hasn't become mainstream at all.
01:50Can you go into that a little bit for someone who might not understand or not?
01:53It's essentially body positivity for fat people and people who are not, like, within
01:58the, like, confines of, like, what one might deem a healthy body.
02:03Fat people are people and deserve respect.
02:06And it's not a matter of, like, judging, like, their lives full stop.
02:13And people think that if you're fat, it's because you choose not to take care of your body.
02:19Right.
02:19It just doesn't make sense.
02:21Right.
02:21Because there's all different kinds of fat people.
02:23Fat people are not a monolith.
02:24There are fat people who are really healthy and there are fat people who are really not
02:27healthy just as there are thin people who are really healthy and thin people who are really
02:31not healthy.
02:32If everyone saw fat people as real people and, like, as, like, cool, fun human beings, then
02:39it wouldn't be, like, a bad thing to be fat.
02:42We all need to, like, lift each other up and promote each other.
02:45I think it is a lot about just awareness and being able to recognize thinness as a privilege
02:53when you're walking through the world.
02:55When we equate our appearance to self-worth, we perpetuate a false idea that our morality
03:00is somehow tied to our body shape.
03:01This idea is so ingrained in our culture that it alters our perception of reality and creates
03:07damaging consequences.
03:08My friend Hannah was praised for her thin body when she modeled.
03:11It was actually at her least healthy both mentally and physically.
03:15When I started modeling when I was 17, I felt a lot of pressure to be thin and it was
03:20hard
03:20to cope with because I wasn't mature enough yet to, you know, stay true to myself.
03:24And what kind of effect did that have on your mental health or feeling good about yourself?
03:28Had a huge effect.
03:29I was just not living a healthy life.
03:32I was concerned about my external appearance rather than the experiences I was having with
03:36friends and family.
03:37And I really just withdrew myself and kind of isolated myself because I became so obsessed
03:43with the wrong things.
03:44How did you become physically and mentally more healthy as time moved on?
03:48What happened was I was going into Fashion Week.
03:51It was my first Fashion Week where my agency had put me in the show rotation, so I was auditioning
03:56for fashion shows.
03:58And I had a really bad health scare right before then and I ended up in the hospital.
04:02And that was like a huge wake-up call.
04:05My body was just so weak and just it was really eye-opening because I was so young and it
04:11was
04:11so not stupid but just really sad I realized what I was doing to myself and the long-term
04:17health effects that it can have on you when you're not nourishing your body.
04:21That kind of started my journey to loving myself was kind of that wake-up call, unfortunately,
04:27but I am really thankful for it.
04:28Back when I was modeling, I was tall and thin and I got a lot of praise for it, which
04:34was
04:34really hard to accept because I wasn't telling people what was going on inside, but I was
04:41a mess.
04:42I was tired all the time.
04:43I would be at school and I would be so exhausted that going upstairs was hard.
04:48It just you can never judge someone's health from what they look like.
04:52I started doing things like yoga, things that incorporated more mindfulness into exercise
04:58and kind of helped me develop a relationship with my body where I realized how amazing
05:03it is to be strong and healthy.
05:05It's really important to find a way to just hone in on your internal voice and know what's
05:09good for yourself.
05:10It broke my heart that Hannah had to face this subjectification at just 17 years old.
05:15Hannah's experience in the fashion industry speaks to a larger issue of representation across
05:19media.
05:20After putting the work in to familiarize himself with his body, my friend James found the confidence
05:24to love it for its function and strength rather than its appearance.
05:29Talk to me about your body confidence, how you got there, and your journey.
05:33Yeah.
05:34It looks like you think it's going to be a line and it's actually like this and mine
05:39started really because I was an actor and there was a lot of pressure to look like a
05:42certain thing.
05:43My body doesn't look like what a lot of the men on Broadway look like and I had a lot
05:46of shame surrounding that.
05:47And I decided that I would reroute my thought process to trying to figure out ways that I
05:52could love what I had because I wasn't going to be able to change everything.
05:55My sophomore year of college when I was going in for like my second Broadway show audition
05:59so I was so excited because I was going to get seen.
06:01And I went into the audition and I sang very well and the music director was like wow that
06:05was amazing and the casting director said come back when you've gained 20 pounds.
06:09And I was stunned and as you can tell it's rare for me to be speechless, right?
06:14And it was the first time I weighed myself in college and interestingly enough when you
06:17look at the Broadway community and you look at the men that round out the majority of the
06:21ensembles there is not much body diversity in them.
06:24Everyone's six feet tall and they have huge biceps and they sing really low and that becomes
06:31the epitome of masculinity on a Broadway stage.
06:33There's nothing wrong with having goals about your body at all if you do them in a healthy
06:36way but I think there is something wrong with changing your body because somebody has set
06:40an expectation about it.
06:42Strength can be 400 pounds or 60 pounds.
06:44It's not defined by your relationship with gravity.
06:46It's defined by what's underneath all of the bones and the muscles and the ligaments.
06:50It's defined by how you walk through the world and back to everyone's right to exist safely.
06:55It's like that's how we can empower people to be strong and not make it about a look and
06:58make it about how are you healing yourself?
07:01How are you working with other people?
07:02How are you walking through the world in a way that is making it better on the path back
07:06than when you got there to begin with?
07:08And we don't talk about this as guys very much because the only comments I hear men talking
07:12about physical progress or lack thereof, we don't talk about how we feel in our bodies.
07:17We don't talk about the pressures to look particularly masculine.
07:21I loved how James made the point that we can all push the body positivity movement forward
07:26through the language we use to describe ourselves and our peers.
07:30And while the movement has made great strides towards acceptance, it still has a long way
07:34to go until it represents the widest spectrums of shapes and figures.
07:38Remember, your best body is the one that you live in and what's most important is who you
07:43are as a person.
07:45When it comes to loving your body, look at yourself in the mirror and instead of thinking
07:48about all the things that you hate and want to change, list out the things that you love
07:52yourself.
07:53Because you are beautiful.
07:53Because you are beautiful.
07:54Thanks a lot.
07:54You are beautiful.
07:54Thanks a lot.
