Tag Archives: body image

Body Positive Lingerie Brands That Embrace All Women

Not even Victoria’s Secret models look like Victoria’s Secret models in real life. Think of the dehydration and diets that happen before fashion shows. Then, you have hours of painstaking Photoshop that go into every catalog image. It all creates an illusion not even the models themselves can live up to. So, when an actual woman tries on the all-new Very Sexy Pushup and the image in the mirror isn’t quite airbrushed perfection, she can feel very un-sexy. Lingerie isn’t always our best friend.

Thankfully, several lingerie brands are taking a stand against the perpetuation of unrealistic beauty standards. They’re creating new products, more realistic advertising, and an underlying belief that all bodies are beautiful just as they are. Now, that’s Very Sexy.

Lonely Lingerie

“For women who wear lingerie as a love letter to themselves” is Lonely Lingerie’s one-sentence manifesto about body positivity. You won’t find any padding, push-up, or pretending in their line, nor airbrushing or unreality in their advertising. Earlier this year, they launched The Lonely Girls Project, a campaign featuring customers and unconventional models wearing their designs in natural environments. Even Lena Dunham joined the movement. She shared a photo of herself sporting a lime green Lonely bra and panty set on Instagram along with a message about loving your body just as it is.

 

Naomi and Georgia - Lonely Lingerie
Photo by: Naomi and Georgia, NYC via www.lonelylabel.com

Me and You

If you’ve been looking for granny panties with the word “feminist” written across them, then look no further than Me and You. It was founded by two best friends, Mayan Toledano and Julia Baylis. The up-and-coming lingerie brand has gotten the attention of young women who are embracing feminism and femininity on their own terms. The playful and subversive line of t-shirts, panties, and dresses looks a little like a psychedelic collaboration between Lisa Frank and Gloria Steinem. Cool girl photographer Petra Collins shot her best friend, Tavi Gevinson, for one of their look books. That’s a lot of feminist street cred.

 

Me and You - Best Friends
Photo by: Best Friends via Me and You

Neon Moon Lingerie

Frustrated with the way mainstream lingerie objectifies and sexualizes women, UK-based Hayat Rachi decided to take matters into her own hands. By making her own line of lingerie that fit her better both physically and philosophically. Her Kickstarter campaign for Neon Moon became fully backed earlier this year. She’s calling it a “feminist lingerie brand that’s empowering women in all phases of womanhood!”

 

Neon Moon lingerie
Photo by: Backless, Orange bof! via www.newmoon.co

You Have Body Image Issues, and That’s Okay

Finding a reason to love ourselves is not as easy as most people think. For some, it may come as human nature. But there are many people out there who find it an everyday battle to face the mirror, much less find something beautiful in what they see. And no, if you’re experiencing it, that doesn’t mean you’re a defective creation of this universe. Body dysmorphia is one of today’s familiar concerns in both men and women. But people who don’t identify as man or a woman, and those who don’t prefer labels also deal with body image issue just as equally.

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I asked author-poet Ashe Vernon about it. An out and proud agender person, Ashe has been vocal about the various issues society is facing today, including body image.

Ashe Vernon
Ashe Vernon

 

For starters, how would you describe a body image issue?

I think it’s anytime someone is unhappy with their body; it can be weight-related or gender presentation- related or any number of things.

 

What can you share about your personal experience with this?

I’ve had issues with body image my whole life. For me, body image gets even more complicated because I’m both overweight and agender, so I’ve had all different kinds of dysphoria when it comes to my body. But honestly, one of the very first things I can remember was being at a sleepover when I was in middle school. All the other girls there were slender and beautiful and I was chubby and kind of awkward. The girls all started tying their t-shirts up to show their stomach. I laughed and made a joke when I did it too, and most of the girls laughed at whatever I had said. But I’ll never forget the girl who turned with this disgusted look on her face and said “please DON’T”. That’s the first time I remember feeling actively ashamed of my body.

I was bullied in elementary school, too, for my weight. There was an older boy who used to follow me around singing “she’s Roly Poly Oly, she’s small and fat and round.”

 

Did you have any self-denial about it?

I think there was a period of time right when I started college where I tried to convince myself that I was “over” my body issues. After all, I’d worked SO hard to love my body, and I think I saw it as a personal failure if I relapsed into self-loathing. I wasn’t willing to admit that it was going to be a life-long process with ups and downs. I was also a theatre major, watching all of the best female roles go to girls with tiny waistlines and that was discouraging, and made it feel like trying to climb a tower of sand. I spent a huge part of my college years convinced that no matter how much I loved my body, nobody else ever would.

What’s the process of trying to understand these issues like?

For me, the first thing I did was remove the word ‘ugly’ from my vocabulary. I made an effort to find something beautiful about every single person I saw, even if it was just a small thing. Instead of mentally criticizing the people around me, I praised them. She had gorgeous hair and he had a genuine smile and her blouse looked great on her. After a while, the positives started to outweigh the negatives, in everyone. A little while longer, and it started to become easier to see the positives in me.

 

Was it easy to get friends and family on board? How much has changed since you became more open about it?

Without a doubt. These days, I have a very supportive network of people in my life. I don’t let negative influences into my personal circle. Even on the days where I don’t feel all that beautiful, there’s always people who love me and who accept me for who I am.

 

Can you describe what a bad day and a good day look like?

These days, bad days aren’t quite as bad as they used to be. Usually when I know I’m having a bad day I try to avoid mirrors and be gentle with myself. If I catch myself being overly critical, I redirect my attention to something else and distract myself from it, and usually by the end of the day I’m at least calm if not positive. But it’s taken me a lot of years to get to this point.

A good day has me glowing. Some good days I’m wearing makeup and other good days I’m not, but those are the days when I have no doubt in my mind that I’m beautiful and worthy of love.

 

Is there one thing about body image issue that you’ve already conquered but is still sometimes knocking on your door?

The hardest thing for me has always been my breasts. I’m a 38FF, so they’ve caused me a lot of grief throughout my life. On top of the back pain and just general inconvenience of having large breasts, not to mention how many men in my life have blatantly stared at them while talking to me, but also when I was younger I hated them because I felt like they made me look even bigger than I was. I had friends of similar body types but smaller breasts and I always felt like they looked more slender than me.

But it went deeper than that, and for a lot of years I had trouble understanding. As I started to figure out my gender identity, I realized that part of my hatred for them was tied into that.

I’ve put a lot of work into accepting my body for it what it is, but sometimes I still struggle accepting them. Honestly, I’m planning on getting a breast reduction once I can afford it.

 

What is your current perception of a “perfect body”?

Every body is perfect.

 

Anything you want to tell women dealing with body image issues?

You’ve been brought up in a world that tells you that you were intended to be consumed–that you should be pleasing and fit into the mold that was made for you. It’s not true. Your body is already perfect because it’s already yours. Loving yourself is so much more important than any dress size.

 

 

Google has 22.5 million results if you search “body image issues” and almost 10 million if you search “how to deal with body image issues”. But more often than not, we don’t really need a how-to guide. Sometimes, we just need a raw voice. Like Ashe’s. Sometimes we just need to know that someone out there is living in this dysfunctional world we call home, and they are doing okay. And we will do okay too.

 

Note: Ashe prefers gender-neutral pronouns  (them/their).