Post by @geniusgirlalert

I posted this back in march, after seeing a movie that had triggered some thoughts about my own body that I thought I had worked through. It was mostly meant to be mantra to myself, for a future rainy day considering the pros and cons of h*rming myself to fit into a body standard. I still can't really believe how strong the reaction was on both sides. For months I received dms that made me feel extremely seen, a community of women that knew exactly what I was talking about, and had been feeling similarly over the last year or so. Alongside them were DMs I used to be terrified of, angry people calling me "f*t, jealous, body-shamer." They scared me at first, worried that receiving this stream of harassment would lead me to act on those initial triggers, that they were right, or that I had accidentally offended when I meant to spread positivity. Anyways, i just received a notification on the original video that reminded me of all of this. Can confirm i still watch this sometimes when i need it, and still read the DMs from some of you that i had screenshotted when this all happened for a little encouragement. I learned that i have to be extremely concise when talking about sensitive subjects online, and even then there will be a group of people that insist on misunderstanding. I'm kinda glad i figured that out early. Watching it now, I can't believe when I first posted it people were so resistant to the idea that the body ideals in media were changing for the worse. I hope this is still helpful for some, and I guess this is a good time to specify that calling this "A normal arm" does not imply that I think it is the ONLY normal arm, lol