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Our mission: to love ourselves, every last inch! To support others, help build positive self esteem! This is The Body Peace Revolution!

This is a place of encouragement, a place to talk about body image, a place for feeling beautiful. No matter what you look like, what color, what gender, what size or however many "flaws", healthy, not healthy, working on it, we are all human, we all deserve to be happy, we all deserve to love ourselves. With this blog you will see all kinds of REAL bodies, REAL people, REAL stories.

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-BE AWARE some posts may be triggering depending on submissions, check for trigger warnings and tags. Also any harassment will be met with blocking and a report to Tumblr Support

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I know my picture doesn’t look like anyone else’s. Hear me out: I don’t want someone to glance at the picture, not see anything “wrong” with me, and then continue scrolling. No, I figure the reaction to this would be more like “….why is there a naked chick holding a guitar?” and then maybe they’ll read my story.

I’ve had Anorexia since I was 12 years old. I didn’t develop an eating disorder because I wanted to be “pretty” or as skinny as the other girls. I was pretty thin to begin with. The horrid truth of the roots of my disorder was that…well, I hung out with the cool kids and we had a semi-open campus lunch. The cool kids ALWAYS ate at a specific store across the street. To my horror though, the food there was too expensive for my family’s budget. My dad gave me $1.50 every day, which would have bought me lunch in the cafeteria. But that wouldn’t even buy a soda at the school store. I was too embarrassed to eat “poor kid food”. So every day I hoarded the money my dad gave me, and when lunch time came I just pretended I wasn’t hungry. It became a habit, fast. My parents both worked all the time anyhow, so it was easy to eat one meal a day, if that, without being noticed.

By age 16, I was known as “the skinny kid.” There’s nothing wrong with being thin, but there IS something scary about being so thin you’re unhealthy, and that’s what I was. “Sick” doesn’t really begin to describe how I looked. Chunks of my hair fell out on a daily basis. I was too weak to play any sports or even walk home from school. I had severe malnourishment issues, and if I barely even bumped into a desk at school, two days later I would look like I’d been beaten with a bat. Twice, the school investigated my home life for signs of abuse, because I was always covered in horrific bruises. At age 17, I was 5’6” and weighed 89 pounds. My parents noticed, but had no idea how to help, short of force-feeding me.

At age 17, I met the “love of my life.” We dated for months, and the time came that I thought I wanted to give him my virginity. We talked about it…set up a date and everything. When the time came down to it, and I was laying before him, unclothed, on his bed….he just stared at me, horrified. Then he leaned down and kissed my kneecaps, and began to cry. He said “I don’t know how to tell you this…but…I hadn’t seen you like this before. You need help. I can’t touch you…I’m afraid I’d break you.” Embarrassed, I hurried into my clothes and left. I felt so betrayed, and humiliated.

I am 20 years old now. Until two months ago, I couldn’t bear being naked….even alone. I would put my robe on before I actually stepped out of the shower, to avoid glancing at myself in the mirror. I have several tattoos, which I got on the parts of my body I liked the least, so that I could sort of MASK my skin. No man or boy or girl had seen me completely naked without me throwing a crying pitching fit about it for a few HOURS beforehand.

 I have been in two psychiatric facilities, to work on my eating disorder, and I am PROUD to say that 8 years down the road, I am finally healthy. I am 5’7” and now weight 126 pounds. Now…I am finally able to feel comfortable being naked. I don’t think of how embarrassed I felt that day, lying on the bed, hearing my boyfriend call me “sick.” Well, maybe I DO think of it actually…a little bit. But then I’m just proud that I was able to overcome it.

Point is…it was a really long road to get to where I am. There was a lot of pain and shame and humiliation along the way. But I’ve never been happier. And I hope, somewhere out there, if there’s a scared boy telling a sick girl that her body looks horrific…well, I hope she has the strength I didn’t have. I hope that she sees it as a chance to take a step back and see herself, and get HELP if she needs it. I hope she doesn’t spend YEARS under the weight of those words, cowering in fear at the thought of going to the beach, or having sex with her loved one. I hope she gets better for HERSELF, not for anyone else. It took me a long time…but it was worth it. Two months ago, if someone had asked to take a picture of me wearing nothing but a guitar….I would have panicked, cried, and ran away. Now, I’d just laugh. (Not that I’m saying it’s a good idea, haha ;))

BE BRAVE! JOIN THE REVOLUTION!