You need Jameela Jamil's body positive Instagram account in your life

‘I’m fucking tired of seeing women just ignore what’s amazing about them and their lives and their achievements, just because they don’t have a bloody thigh gap’

Words by Anna Clarke

Instagram is definitely guilty of piling on the peer pressure when it comes to perfection and unrealistic beauty standards. But the social platform has also become a space for positivity and encouragement. The latest body positive campaign is the I Weigh movement started by The Good Place actress Jameela Jamil. This new Insta crusade encourages women (and men) to reflect with a post of self-love, highlighting all the traits and intricacies that make each of us an amazing human being, beyond the numbers we see on the bathroom scales...

Body positivity has been spreading across the platform for some time. There was the Spanish artist, Cinta Tort Cartró, who turned stretch marks into beautiful multi-coloured works of art, then Morgan Mikenas, musician and fitness blogger, whose viral Insta post of her fuzzy legs celebrated female body hair in all its natural glory. And now Jameela.

The idea for I Weigh first came about in February when Jameela called out a body-shaming meme that tried to guess how much the Kardashian and Jenner women weigh. Clearly over the incessant and damaging pressures placed on women today, the actress-come-presenter found herself ‘on the war path’ and decided to do something about it.

‘I’m fucking tired of seeing women just ignore what’s amazing about them and their lives and their achievements, just because they don’t have a bloody thigh gap,’ she said in Instagram post.

Infuriated by the BS appearing on her feed, she reflected with a post celebrating everything that makes her HER, including her laugh, being financially secure on her own and her bingo wings.

‘I weigh: Lovely relationship. Great friends. I laugh every day. I love my job. I make an honest living. I’m financially independent. I speak out for women’s rights. I like my bingo wings. I like myself in spite of EVERYTHING I’ve been taught by the media to hate myself about.’

And loads of others soon started getting in on the action too by sharing similar posts of themselves on the platform.

Jameela decided to collate all this positivity under one Instagram account, I Weigh, to ensure that the momentum continued and with thousands of followers already, it looks set to keep growing. With the simple aim being to ‘feel valuable and see how amazing we are.’

So here’s to looking ‘beyond the flesh on our bones.’