Hi, my name is Ashley and I’m a hypocrite. I preach about positive body image, I tell women to honor and love their curves, I say I’d rather be strong than skinny, and I yell at my friends when they call themselves fat. But the truth is, it’s really hard to take that advice to heart. Am I kind of ashamed to tell you this? Yes. But I think it’s important to talk about.
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Why I’m Outing Myself as a Hypocrite:
Some things we rarely talk about on the blog: politics and religion. But today, I’m going to tell you what I gave up for lent. Now, I am not very religious, but this year I did decide to give something up. Because I needed to. I felt like a hypocrite; a fraud. And I was engaging in extremely unhealthy behavior that needed to stop. I wasn’t practicing what I preached. So what did I give up for lent this year?
I gave up calling myself fat. Or obese. Or disgusting. Or saying I looked pregnant with a food baby. I can’t be the girl who poses in her sports bra, and swimsuit telling you all to love your body and embrace your curves if I don’t always do that myself. Sometimes after shoots, I’m truly nervous to open the folder with the photos in it. “How fat will I look?” is always lurking in the back of my mind — and that is AWFUL.
It’s been five days so far and I feel so much better. It’s refreshing to eat a meal and not feel guilty after. It’s nice not to text my friends after eating a burger about how disgusting I feel. It’s uplifting to look in the mirror and try not to see “fat” staring back at me. This is something I need to extend far beyond lent. This is a vicious cycle that I have been involved with for I don’t even know how many years.
I am so thankful for my friend, Sarah of Sassy Red Lipstick — she is always inspiring me and challenging me to be a better person. I texted her on the verge of tears a few weeks ago because I had to go bridesmaid dress shopping and, as usual, I am always the biggest one — by like 5 sizes. Which in perspective, is fine and doesn’t matter at all. But it’s these problems that we curvy girls face every day that some people don’t think about. But you can either do two things when these situations happen: you can go home and cry and feel bad for yourself — or you can ignore it and just embrace what you have. And thanks to Sassy, I chose the latter.
I’m writing this not only to call myself out, and hold myself accountable — but because self love is a journey. You can’t just wake up one day and be like “Yup, I’m going to be confident today.” I mean, I guess some people can, but that’s not me. I know that I can’t be the only one who experiences this on a daily basis — because I have at least five friends who I am constantly texting these things to. I made some of them give this up too!
This came at an amazing time, because next week I have to shoot a pretty big swim campaign. I was having anxiety about this in Paris — but I couldn’t turn down those macarons even though I took SEVENTEEN days off from the gym. I could starve myself until then to try and get my “beach body” ready. But instead, I am trying to enjoy my life and to take my own advice. I’m writing this on the afternoon of my boyfriend’s birthday — so tonight we will go out to dinner and I will eat some cake — because not only does he love me just the way I am, but I am trying to love myself the same way too.
