Miss D piece from September last year :’’

Also, i’ve been posting more of my art on IG. So yea feel free to come by and say hi there tho ;3

Practical Guide for Body Acceptance

By Real Body Revolution

I hear this question a lot – “How do I begin to accept my body?” or “Where do I start?” If you’re asking this question, you may already intellectually understand body acceptance and even support it (particularly for other people), but how do you apply it to your own life? How do you take theory and put it into practice? Here’s what worked for me and I sincerely hope it will help you. Remember, the journey will be different for each traveller, but maybe this will get you going in the right direction!  

1.     Learn! Understanding the social context and history of beauty standards was very empowering for me. It helped me realize that this isn’t a “me” issue. I am not alone in this and the self-loathing I’ve been feeling was generated externally and had been nurtured since early childhood. I also discovered that all this “thin = health” stuff is BS, along with dieting and weight loss in general. The messaging we keep receiving from this War on Obesity is not in line with the science and is actually more like a faith-based religion that irrationally hates fat. Here’s a list of books that were pivotal in my journey: Body Acceptance Arsenal. Check your library if funds are tight!

2.     Update your internal beauty standard. This is the idea of beauty you hold in your mind, shaped by decades of external influence and formed by seeing the same unrealistic, unattainable versions of beauty over and over again, until you believe that it’s the only way to be beautiful. It’s not.   To update your internal beauty standard, you can use my Tumblr or any others that regularly post images of diverse bodies.  I created my Tumblr to serve as a library of images that do not conform to traditional beauty standards with the purpose of nurturing body acceptance and updating the viewer's internal beauty standards to include a diverse range of bodies. This is a counter measure to the millions of messages we are exposed to daily so please, check in often to maintain a more inclusive view of beauty for yourself and others.

Also, curate your social media feed by unsubscribing from accounts that promote traditional beauty standards. You’ve seen enough of this to last a life time and will continue to be exposed to it on the daily just from magazine covers at grocery store checkouts to billboards when you’re walking to work so, no need to see it on your feed. Subscribe instead to accounts that promote body acceptance or diverse imagery. Here are some suggestions of people to follow (it’s not an exhaustive list at all, just something to get you started): https://www.verywellmind.com/body-positive-influencers-4165953 I also recommend: Christy Harrison, Fat Girl Flow, Margie Plus, Dexter Mayfield, Yulianna Yussef, Baddie Winkle, Ruby Roxx and Advanced Style.

3.     Create a support system of like-minded individuals. You can do this by sharing what you’re learning by those around you, but not everyone in your life will be receptive to this (sadly). So I would suggest joining some online support groups, like on Facebook. Make sure the groups are diet-free zones and for every body.

4.     Start healing your relationship with food and ditch diet culture for good. If you do the readings I suggested, you will learn the truth about dieting. Knowing the truth isn’t enough though, you have to actively break-up with diet culture. Throw out your scale and if you can’t stomach doing that yet, get someone to hide it for you. Out of sight, out of mind. I would also strongly suggest exploring and practicing Intuitive Eating. There are a lot of great resources out there for this, but my favorites are The F*ck It Diet book and Julie Duffy Dillon’s podcast “Love, Food”.

5.     Rebuild your self-worth. Being beautiful is not rent you owe the world for existing and your appearance and weight do not define your worth.  What I’ve found super helpful is developing an inner nurturing voice to counter my inner critic. I wrote a separate post on how to do this here: Silencing Your Inner Critic and Developing a Nurturing Voice to Replace It.

6.     Practice self-compassion. Touch yourself lovingly, especially the parts of your body you’re disconnected from or feel the most animosity towards. Stroke these parts softly and say loving things to them while you do it. For me, it was my tummy. I started referring to it as my marshmallow and thanking it for turning food into energy and keeping me alive.  Treat yourself the way you would treat a loved one or a child and stop punishing yourself! For example, don’t wear or hang on to clothes that are too tight for your current body and remind you constantly that you’ve gained weight. Self-care can mean doing a closet purge. Get rid of your “skinny jeans” because they are a daily subconcious message that you’re “hoping to get into them again some day”. Go through everything, try it on. If it doesn’t fit, it comes out of the closet. You can either purge these items or tuck them away in a storage bin. Replenish your wardrobe with items that fit (the size doesn’t matter, only the fit) and that make you feel confident. If you’re on a budget, you can do this process one item at a time, as you can afford it.

7.     Let go of the dream of future weight loss. This part was the hardest for me and I went through a grieving process when I had to finally let go of some future skinny version of me. One thing I did is write down all the things that I imagined being thinner would get me in life and then address each of those things individually. For example, one thing I identified was that I had this fantasy of wearing a bikini on the beach with confidence. Turns out, I can wear a bikini on the beach at any size if I have internal confidence. Also.. what beaches am I even dreaming about? Tbh, I don’t even like the beach and have no strong desire to go to one regardless of what size I’m in – I don’t do well with heat, sand, water in my face or sharks. A lot of the fantasies I had in my head about being thin had never been challenged before and did not hold up to scrutiny so were surprisingly easy to demolish.

8.     Face your internalized fat phobia. It can be a really uncomfortable process, but you need to face your deepest, darkest, hidden feelings about fatness. For me, body acceptance was okay for everyone else, just not for me. I still (secretly) wished I was thinner. I still (secretly) felt like my fat body wasn’t worthy as it was. Similar to the process above, I wrote out everything I was telling myself about what fat means for me. One thing that came out of it was the fear of not being attractive to others. Here’s the thing I now know with certainty - I don’t want to be chosen by others for what I look like. I flat out do not respect people who body shame or dismiss people based on appearance. And I recognize appearance changes with age, so anyone choosing me based on my appearance is only choosing how I look in that moment – it’s a temporary, superficial choice. So why would I invest my time and energy into someone like that? The one thing I can count on in life is that my body will change over time and with age, so I will not commit for less than unconditional love. Also, quality over quantity! If you are conventionally beautiful, you may have more people chasing after you.. but what kind of people are they? And how exhausting and frustrating would be it be to have to sort through all these superficial, shallow people who only like you for what you look like? In my humble opinion, it’s not a benefit, it’s a time waster. I now look at being fat as a super power when it comes to relationships of any kind – my fatness will expose someone’s fat phobia, shallowness or body shaming tendencies lightning fast and I don’t have to waste any more time with them.  

9.     Stop comparing yourself to others! Comparison is the thief of joy and another person’s beauty is not the absence of your own. A useful metaphor is to think about flowers. There is a huge range of diversity among flowers. All different shapes, colors, sizes and formations. All beautiful in their own way. And people all have different tastes when it comes to flowers - some prefer calla lilies, others prefer the black bat flower. Remember: “A rose can never be a sunflower and a sunflower can never be a rose… all flowers are beautiful in their own way and that’s like women too” – Miranda Kerr. Take this a step further and actively lift other people up on a daily basis. This can be people you know or complete strangers. If you see someone walk by with a killer outfit, tell them you love it. If your friend is considering dieting, tell them they are worthy exactly as they are – no diet necessary.  This can help move you beyond jealous feelings caused by comparison and help you develop an appreciation for others instead of competition.  

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Keep in mind that this journey is tough and requires effort. You’ve been bound in self-loathing for decades and it all has to be undone, one knot at a time. It’ll feel daunting and will be full of ups and downs. While you are healing your relationship with your body and food, you will probably be triggered often. Whenever this happened to me, I would use the trigger as a tool to show me what I still needed to work on because part of why it bothered me was because I believed it was true (otherwise, I would have dismissed it as rudeness or ignorance on someone else’s part). To move beyond feeling triggered or discouraged, do something to remind you of your goal of body acceptance and your worth (listen to a podcast, view some diverse images, reach out to your online support group, re-read one of the books in the list, etc).

You can do this. <3 

Lizzo, Our Queen “Cuz I Love You” album review

The journey to self love, to becoming her own hero, was not an easy or a short process for Lizzo, the meer length and diversity the album attests to the all hands on deck full frontal attack necessary to disregard hegemonic processes and find home in yourself. But just listening to Cuz I Love You will make you see that you are your own soulmate, always and forever. Home is you. Home is your eyes, your rolls, your jelly, your hair, your heart, your mind, your very existence. Home is the embodiment of you. And Lizzo doesn’t want you to ever forget that you are love itself and your own true soulmate.

“Seeing people catch a feeling in their spirit and sprint the aisles of the church while my cousins played driving, uplifting gospel stuck with me. I let that same feeling wash over me when I experience and perform music.” - Lizzo

Lizzo is glorious, glamorous, and unapologetically proud of her existence; she is a blues-rap-soul-punk rock star that defies genres and  proclaims the power of self-love. She teaches us that we are each our own soulmates.  Her work speaks to growth, to healing, to a nonlinear process of self care. She softly speaks to her audiences as if they were her family during warm Sunday morning gospel services that taught her the dynasty and the beauty of blackness during her childhood in her Houston and Michigan homes. She stands with her crowds, always an embodiment of the heavenly beauty of plus sized black femininity and power. She talks about the term body positive and teaches an important lesson of love: “It’s not a label I wanted to put on myself. It’s just my existence. All these fucking hashtags to convince people that the way you look is fine. Isn’t that fucking crazy? I say I love myself, and they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, she’s so brave. She’s so political.’ For what? … Even when body positivity is over, it’s not like I’m going to be a thin white woman. I’m going to be black and fat. That’s just hopping on a trend and expecting people to blindly love themselves. That’s fake love. I’m trying to figure out how to actually live it.” And through out her musical career, Lizzo has done exactly that, figuring out how to embody and live self love while teaching us how to by example.

The angelic performer earned a well-deserved spot in this years April 2019 Coachella lineup, and her performance was nothing short of incredible despite several technical difficulties. In just seven years Lizzo, who’s daytime name is Melissa Viviane Jefferson, went from a South Alief Houston rapper to a small venue Minneapolis genre defying performer, all the way to Coachella, continuously declaring her truth and inspiring radical self-love the whole way. During her Coachella performance, she spoke to the audience as she always does, as if they were her family, her friends, her kin,  and she reminded them of their beauty and of their humanity. Standing above the crowd in a glimmering Golden leotard, the breath-taking singer spoke to her audience from her heart, “Its times like these I need this fucking song. This song- this next song I’m about to perform, I’ve used in my darkest times.” She pauses and looks up towards the sky above the roof of the festival tent, almost as if in prayer. “I’ve used it when I was depressed. I’ve used it when I was lonely- when I was heart broken. I’ve used it when I was a little bit disappointed in myself, and I’ll be using this song right now to lift me right the fuck up.” Lizzo stands at the edge of the stage, looking across the audience, a glittering sea of the back of people's heads bouncing softly with the beat of uplifting and powerful piano playing over the loudspeakers. Someone lifts their hands above the crowd and makes the shape of a heart by connecting their pointer fingers and thumbs together in the direction of Lizzo, in the direction of a person who inspires them.

The audience feels warm, handing Lizzo a heart of love as as she hands one right back out to her fans, “And I hope it lifts you right the fuck up too Coachella. Cuz I wanna know how your feeling right now. This is a check in from me- to you.” She takes a deep breath and begins “I do my hair toss, check my nails, baby how you feeling, feeling Good as Hell.” Her 2016 song “Good as Hell” is a powerful declaration of black feminism and radical self love, in the worst of times and the best of times. The music video features black women  celebrating themselves in the self-created community of resistance and resilience- Natural Hair salons. Dancing together, talking themselves up in the mirror, feeling themselves, loving themselves, and supporting each other is a part of the radical message of self love of Lizzo’s work. Lizzo’s “Good as Hell” is a reminder that even when you’re heart-broken over the first person you ever said I love you to,  it will be okay. If you’re not getting what you need out of any relationship, friendship or otherwise, its time “to walk your fine as out the door.” The song ends with Lizzo smiling warmly at the camera, then walking out the door, through an exit sign, into the nonlinear journey of healing and self love. Lizzo reminds us the first and most important person in our lives is and always will be ourselves. We are home in our own bodies. Lizzo switches from a first person declaration to a second person revelation from the beginning to the end of the song encouraging the listener to partake on this journey themselves. On NPR, song reviewer Hanif Abdurraqib writes of the poignant ephemerality of Lizzo’s  “Good as Hell” and theme of self love it teaches: “It is the song that first says, "We're going to do it," and then says, "You are doing it better than anyone ever has," and then, "You did it. Thank you," and I love you.

When asked by Rolling Stone about the themes of radical self love in her albums throughout the years Lizzo lamented about the 2016 Coconut Oil album that featured “Good as Hell,” “The first time I practiced self love- and I think practice and experiencing are two different things- it was while I was making coconut oil, and I was taking time, to rub my whole body in coconut oil and just taking that time every day to just lather myself in coconut oil, to moisturize myself, and nourish myself. And I made that one of my first self care, self love routines.” Since her beginnings as a rapper in South Alief, Houston, Texas, her work has inspired radical body positivity and body self loving, and her 2019 hit album, Cuz I Love You is no different. She's a  glamourous, glorious, thick black women who is a master at her flute- Sasha Flute- who has her own Instagram account. Lizzo is a shining Golden star amidst a world plagued by systems of oppression and she spoke of the importance of the justice work of her music in an interview with Billboard magazine. Her music is meant to be a love song to those who are disenfranchised by society at every turn, “because that is the experience that I have had throughout the course of my life. I’ve always stood up for the underdog and the underrepresented because I can’t escape from that myself,” she said. “I can’t wake up one day and not be black. I can’t wake up one day and not be a woman. I can’t wake up one day and not be fat. I always had those three things against me in this world, and because I fight for myself, I have to fight for everyone else.” And no matter what, she always does and she inspires with her own resiliency. When Coachella botched the background music during her performance not just once, but twice, Lizzo said not today, and pulled out Sasha the Flute and showed off her music degree, singing Juice acapella in between the orchestraic bird song of her breathless air singing in the metal instrument.  She reflects the power of self love and the sun and black girl magic itself, and that is the message is continued in her most recent and third Studio Album, Cuz I Love You that beat Beyonce’s recent HomeComing Live album, taking the number one seat over the weekend of its release. The masterpiece of an album, detailing the nonlinearity of self love and healing through an adventure of music that brings you an unapologetic fluid-queer-black-feminist rapper over a soulful set of musical intonations(“Cuz I Love Your”), brings you radically proud beachy tunes for a family of friends (“Juice”), brings you genre defying pop-rap that teaches you that you’re your own soulmate (“Soulmate”), brings you a dance jam in Heaven with your faves (“Heaven Help Me”). In the album only two songs have music videos paired with them, “Cuz I love You,” and “Juice.”

The album, Cuz I Love You begins with the song for after which it was made. The namesake of this journey reflects a true love story, perhaps, the only true love story, the process of radically loving ourselves. Lizzo sings languishly with soul vibrato and the rhythm of the blues struggles “I’m Crying, cuz I looooooove youuuuuuuu.” In the music video, we are faced with Lizzo dressed in a 1920’s flapper style campy feather boa gown. The opening shot is a close up of her face, with her eyes turned down away from the camera as “Cuz I Love You” flashes in all capital red text over her face, demanding your attention demanding you listen, as it slowly fades out with the vibratto of her face. Her expression is filled with anguish and sorrow as she lifts her eyes slowly and breaks stares directly into the camera, breaking the fourth wall while singing directly to herself and to you, the person huddled over their laptop computer eating icecream while watching music videos in the middle of the night when you can’t sleep. She laments the struggles and trials of practicing self love amidst a society that teaches you to do anything but, “I thought that I didn't care-but baby, I don't know what I'm gone do, I'm crying, cuz I love you. Yes, you.”  Her face reflects memories of pain, suffering, hurt, and perhaps most importantly, healing. As she lifts her eyes to the viewer- and to herself- she sings with unshaking vibrato “I'm crying cuz I love you,” finally, its an emotional release. It's a song dedicated to her own process of learning to love herself and her wish that her music is a love letter to other marginalized people to practice radical self love. She’s beautiful, and she knows it now even though she maybe didn't before. “Cuz I Love You” is a reminder to the viewer that even if you don't believe in yourself right now, you one day can and one day will. Even if you think you don't care about yourself, you will learn to. Lizzo reminds you that you are the only person you spends every single moment with.

In “Cuz I Love You,” Lizzo sings of the beauty of her eyes, her body, her temple, and her love album to herself reminds us to do the same with ourselves. Lizzo gives us a necessary reminder that healing is not linear, and that we are each our own true soulmates, our own true lovers. Her video reminds us that it is okay to cry, and she speaks directly to black men, literally embodying the priest behind the confession box, telling them and reminding them, that its okay to cry. They are each their own blessing. The shot switches to an room where a ritual will occur, and she continues speaking directly to herself and to the black men in the room. She emotes the music through her body, dancing and swaying in hoefitted unapologetic beaded wedding dress that shows that thick thighs really do save lives. Lizzo as in artist, is a strong proponent of the right of women to take agency over their own bodies and do what they want- wear booty shorts, a hijaab, thigh gapped dresses, suits, slacks, crop tops- anything that makes them feel beautiful and powerful. Lizzo sings to us and to the room of black men a love story of healing and of growth after a break up with herself, rather than with anyone else, and reminds us all to practice this part of our own love stories. Lizzo teaches us how to love ourselves again after we’ve been through it; she teaches us the unapologetic self love of our stretch marks and rolls, of our very embodiments, but most importantly, she teaches us its okay to feel whatever she needs to feel. Throughout the music video, a number of black men silently shed tears, an acknowledgment of the emotional and physical trauma caused by antiblackness and a direct rejection of the hegemonic expectations of how black men are supposed to hold themselves, and a declaration of their love and humanity.

The next song in the album “Like a Girl” is a feminist declaration of the power and beauty of black women. She validates all women, cis and trans, black and white, poor and rich, “if you feel like a girl then you real like a girl.” Though some reviewers have written the song off as corporate, Lizzo’s empowering music is made with those marginalized and oppressed at the center, in the true equitable power of inclusivity. She said in response to the off-the-nose reviews that  “I’m trying to be inclusive. Could this song be in a Dove commercial? Yes, but it won’t. They aren’t thinking about everybody.” This reminds us of why we love Lizzo so much, she fights for those disenfranchised, she sings accessible love songs to each and every one of us. And she herself represents a fat black women who challenges Enlightenment colonial projects to catalogue human beings for the sake of order, that only leads to oppression. She defies boundaries of false categories, validates trans women, black women, poor women, disabled women, queer women, and reminds us that all aspects of our identities are related, always informing each other, fluid, and impossible to split apart. She destroys violent hegemonies surrounding sex and gender, pointing out the fallacy that occurs when conservatives say “chromosomes” in response to trans people existing- we all have different chromosomes and sex cannot be cleanly catalogued, highlighting multiple times through out the songs the validity of trans women’s womanhood, “If you feel like a girl, then you real like a girl, do your thing, run the whole damn world.” In a tweet published on July 31rst 2017, Lizzo wrote about the importance of the inclusivity of “Like a Girl.” “Every fuckin day there's someone(thing) being targeted and marginalized, i.e. trans black women, young Muslim girls, immigrants, our health. We don't realize how much these external triggers affect us. Fear in the news, social media culture, bigotry in America.. it takes a toll.” A toll that can be challenged, resisted, and fought through the praxis of radical self love, and in the next song of this star dazzling album of unapologetic existence, Lizzo shows us exactly how to live our own truths.

“Juice” gives us the campy positive and unapologetic representation of fat black women that we all need; it gives us the Juice to keep going.  It gives us the blessing that is the juice and jelly of our bodies. Do you got the Juice? Well, Lizzo does. And its fucking beautiful. Lizzo refuses to apologize for her existence and “Juice” is an expression of this unapologetic beauty. As the only other song in the album besides its namesake to have a music video, we see the Queen herself on late night talk shows, on 1990s sweat band style zumba sets, and on the journey to sell the viewer the Juice. This Juice is the self love and power that comes from being proud of your fatness, your embodiment, your very worth(which is so much) for just existing. In an interview with the NewYork Times Lizzo regards “Juice”, “what do we really mean underneath? I was born like this. I was born like this means I love me for me. No matter what makeup I have on, what weave I have on, whether I got lash extensions on or not.” No matter what, she reminds herself and all the teenagers, young kids, millennials, and middle aged moms of their inherent bad-assery “I was born like this, don't even gotta try.” Yes she was, and yes, yes you are. Lizzo helped me learn to love myself, just for myself, and that’s it. This beautiful and unapologetic genre defying rapper is changing the world for the better.

The fourth song is the jam we blast out our car windows into the world as we drive in the left lane on the highway in the middle of the city, in the middle of the night. The city sleeps but we do not. Four 20 something year olds bounce in their seats to a love song reminding us all that we’re each our own soulmates.  I lean my head against my roommate and very dear friend, Rosalind. “I know I’m a Queen and I don’t need no crown” we shout at the top of our lungs, I feel my close friends happiness. The wind hears us, along with our hearts. Lizzo reminds us that we are own lovers, our own destiny, our own home:

“Cause I'm my own soulmate. I know how to love me,

I know that I'm always gonna hold me down,

Yeah, I'm my own soulmate.

No, I'm never lonely.

I know I'm a queen, but I don't need no crown”

I look at my beloved roommate, the person I have shared a room with for the past 3 years. I look at the person I had a surreal and absolutely magical experience studying abroad with in the musical cobblestoned Italian city that will always be in my heart. I know I’m never lonely because the communities and chosen families I have created, and I know that the first person in that community, in that family, is me.  The stories of love in your life start with you, just by existing- each and every ephemeral memory you share with other people is a magical moment you share with yourself. Find company and home and comfort in yourself, in the fact that you are your very own soulmate, always, and forever.  Lizzo taught me that. And she wants to teach that to you too.

“Tempo” is a majestic club percussionist beat that throws one out for all the big girls, boys, and nonbinary lovelies dancing their hearts out in truth. Dancing, like music, like the visual arts, is therapy.  The arts have always been a way for people to express themselves, art is therapy itself. And Lizzo’s album Cuz I Love You is the medication we need. Lizzo undertakes a musical masterpiece with Missy Elliot in “Tempo” that celebrates the beauty of plus size bodies and how insufficient slow songs are for moving all this body.

“Slow songs, they for skinny hoes

Can't move all of this here to one of those

I'm a thick bitch, I need tempo (Tempo)

Fuck it up to the tempo.”

Lizzo’s visceral description of feeling the beat through ones body is a celebration of the tempo’s that allow her and other plus sized bodies to jiggle their truths and their beauty.

Taking up space on the dance floor as a thick, fat, and plus sized person is revolutionary-nothing is quite as beautiful as my tummy jelly, thigh jelly, arm jelly bouncing unapologetically to the music. Thick thighs really do save lives. The rolls in our bodies are natural and healthy, and are just like the rolls of clouds that float in the sky. And Lizzo reminds us of that, of fucking it up with just you, yourself, and your beautiful, hot, sexy jelly. My thick sisters and I grind on each other beneath the fluttering blue and pink lights. When asked about Tempo, Lizzo reflected on the importance of art as therapy, the importance of art in inspiring self love. Seeing a beautiful painting hanging in a museum of a plus sized black person is powerful, and allows little girls who are bullied because of their embodiments to see that people who look like them are beautiful masterpieces, dazzling works of art, forever celebrated on a museum wall.  Lizzo talks about the importance of representation in art, “Everyone looks to an artist for something more than just the music, and that message of being comfortable in my own skin is number one for me.”

Lizzo clothes the album with a sensual song reflecting the beauty, inside and out, of big women. No one says it better than Lizzo herself  “Big women are pursued for relationships, big women deal with fuckboys, big women are beautiful and loving creatures, and it’s just not talked about, because it’s not the story that mainstream media chooses to tell. I’m not creating a fantasy — if it’s shocking, it’s because that story isn’t told and that’s often because big women aren’t even involved to tell their [own] stories. I just happen to be here in the room, I have a platform and I’m telling the story. I’m not going to shy away from it, I’m not embarrassed, this is who I am.” The blush inducing song attests to the hotness, the sexyness of plus sized women. There’s more to love after all. The last clause of the song goes full circle, and is Lizzo sending a love letter to herself, dressing up in her see-through lingerie because it makes her feel good.

“So I lounge around in my lingerie

I wanna be prepared for you just in case, yeah

So I lounge around in my lingerie

Ooh, you better come my way.”

The journey to self love, to becoming her own hero, was not an easy or a short process for Lizzo, the meer length and diversity the album attests to the all hands on deck full frontal attack necessary to disregard hegemonic processes and find home in yourself. But just listening to Cuz I Love You will make you see that you are your own soulmate, always and forever. Home is you. Home is your eyes, your rolls, your jelly, your hair, your heart, your mind, your very existence. Home is the embodiment of you. And Lizzo doesn’t want you to ever forget that you are love itself and your own true soulmate.