7 Body Image Influencers You Need To Follow (& Personal Story on Body Shame)
It’s an unfortunate truth that body image and self-esteem issues don’t only affect adults, but it’s very much a part of the experience of children.
Since elementary school, my body has been a staple topic for strangers, peers, relatives and inherently myself.
As an adult, I’m always battling with my body image issues, and I know I’m not alone.
It’s challenging to love yourself when you’re haunted by negative body image experiences from your childhood and living in a society that belittles you unless you have the ideal body type–whatever that means.
I continue to put efforts into building a healthy relationship with my body, loving my curves and honouring the mere miracle that is my body. This isn’t a one-and-done type of situation, it’s a constant conversation I have to have with myself for the rest of my life.
Social media can be a controversial topic; it’s both helped and hurt my body image experience. Ultimately the ability to love yourself, and celebrate your body needs to come from within. But, getting there doesn’t need to be done alone.
Of course, you can get support from your personal community, or seek professional guidance, whether that is counselling or other means of support.
However, one thing I’ve found that has helped me develop more of a body-positive conversation with myself has been filling my social media apps with people who celebrate their bodies, and reinforce the type of love I want to have towards my own body.
If you’re reading this and you’re looking to follow people who will make you feel empowered and remind you why different bodies are beautiful and deserve to be celebrated, check out the list of these baddies below. Please know, you’re loved.
1. Maddie Dragsbaek (@maddiedragsbaek)
2. Kayley Sims (@kayleysims)
3. Dr. Heidi Cooke (@doc_heidcooke)
4. Allison Jacobs (@allison.jacobsss)
5. Hanah Witton (@hannahwitton)
6. Zoe Roe (@zozoroe)
7. Cassandra Voelker (@cassandrajvoelker)
About the Author
Hello 👋 my name is Danielle, as you know from my above ramblings I’ve struggled with my body image since the beginning of time, and I’d gather a guess that you might be in a similar boat if you’re reading this, or know someone who is. All I have to say is I love you! I hope this article helped make your social feed a bit more body positive because let’s face it, we need to take all we can get especially on those low days.
Back in 2021, our team, at BinoBooks, was figuring out what book topic we wanted our first children’s book to be written on. Knowing how I faced a lot of body shame growing up, I had a mission to make our first book centred around body image, and celebrating all bodies. So, we did it, we created our first personalized storybook, “Humans Can’t Fly, But They Can!” Knowing there is a possibility I can make a young version of myself feel a bit more accepted and celebrated for her beautiful and strong body brings the biggest smile to my face.
So from our team to you, we hope you enjoy having a peek at these lovely women’s Instagram, and be sure to tag us @hellobinobooks on Instagram, or comment below, to let us know who we’re missing from this list.
About BinoBooks
At BinoBooks, we create personalized digital storybooks on complex topics, such as body image, that act as conversation starters between parent and child while making the child feel represented through character customizations.
We initially started our venture in the Queen’s Innovation Centre program in 2020, which you can find here, with a prototype book on covid. As of January 4th, 2022, we successfully completed a crowdfunding campaign for our first official book “Humans Can’t Fly, But They Can” on Kickstarter, which you can find here, and is on the topic of body image.
We’ve now launched our first customizable storybook, ”Humans Can’t Fly, But They Can” on our website, you can check it out here.