We all know October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but did you know October is also Love Your Body Month? Sponsored by the National Organization for Women [NOW], Love Your Body is a campaign that celebrates women of all sizes, body types and shapes and promotes tolerance, diversity and acceptance for all bodies. The campaign also fights back against our society’s unrealistic and often unattainable beauty standards constantly presented by the media.
Our society seems to thrive off “fat-shaming,” which is calling people fat who don’t fit an ideal size, usually anywhere from zero to five. Fat-shaming has many forms. The most popular method of fat-shaming is through “fitspiration.” In reaction to our country’s obesity epidemic, society has developed another way to shame us for not being size two models.
Fitspiration is the use of digitally enhanced and altered photos of men and women to sell diet or weight loss products, which can include supplements, exercise videos and special foods (i.e. Jenny Craig, Nutri-System, etc.) and pass off the altered images of models and actors as healthy and attainable (which is not possible without the use of Photoshop).
Very similar to thinspiration, fitspiration  uses fat-shaming  to “motivate” people to exercise and get “healthy” so they will try to pursue the unrealistic beauty ideals seen in the mass media.  I know you all have seen commercials like Insanity, Hip-Hop Abs and P90X so you guys know what I’m talking about. Throughout the entire 30-minute infomercial, the message is you are not fit and healthy unless you look like a model from an issue of Sports Illustrated magazine. 
The Love Your Body Campaign recognizes this despicable tactic and calls advertisers out on it. Fat-shaming people into losing weight is not okay  and completely unacceptable, especially when it’s exploitation to make money. Advertisers, companies in the diet industry and society in general, sell us the idea thin automatically equals healthy, something that is not true. All bodies are healthy and beautiful, and we don’t need rock-hard abs and tiny waistlines to be attractive.
Now before I get a thousand responses accusing me of promoting acceptance of obesity and undermining or shielding the reality of the dangers of obesity, please know that is not the case.
I am all for losing weight for health benefits and health reasons but not to reinforce society’s ridiculous beauty standards. Celebrities like Monique and Queen Latifah  have lost weight but are still considered “fat” by Hollywood and America’s standards, which is absurd. 
Love Your Body is about accepting people of all sizes, races and cultures and recognizing them as beautiful. While society fixates on one type of look, Love Your Body embraces all looks. We, as individuals, are more than just numbers on a scale and are far more valuable than being and objectified ogled over.
Whether you are big, small, medium, in between sizes or whichever category society attempts to put you in, The Love Your Body Campaign wants you to love and accept yourself and refuse to buy into society’s impossible ideals.
I know this is something easier said than done (believe me, I struggle with this every day) but accepting yourself is well worth the effort.
Love Your Body day is Wednesday, and you better believe I’m not going to spend it obsessing in the mirror. Please do the same. Life is too short and too precious to spend hating yourself.