I wanted to let everyone know that the photo that accompanies the Huffington Post article was taken by Bronwyn Green. I feel super bad that I didn’t mention it before.
The Facebook “likes” on my Huffington Post essay, “I Wore A Bikini And Nothing Happened” have reached 100k. I don’t know how I feel about that. On the one hand, I knew I was putting my bikini picture on the Huffington Post and the internet in general. On the other hand, my most popular piece there was my Jennifer Lawrence body-shaming article, and that has something like 49k likes. So I didn’t expect for much to happen with it.
WOW. Did I vastly underestimate women’s need to see “imperfect” bodies just doing regular, human stuff. There are so many comments there, and I’ve gotten so many tweets and emails, where women will say things like they’re going to wear shorts, or go sleeveless, or try a two-piece or any bathing suit at all, now that they’ve seen that article. A lot of you have said really sweet things to me over the years about my writing affecting your lives (especially during my 50 Shades of Grey recaps), but it stuns me every time.
Not only am I getting messages going, “You’re helping me with my personal stuff,” but the support I’m getting is overwhelming. People saying, “You look fantastic,” and “my husband approves,” and “you’re wearing it well.” Obviously, that’s not why I posted the article, it’s a broader social commentary (the point of which was that it doesn’t matter how you look, you’re still entitled to wear whatever you want and be comfortable doing it), but the fact that I’ve received more of those messages than negative ones makes me really hopeful for the future of fat people. I’d braced myself against losing my faith in humanity when I scrolled through the comments section, but it was actually restored. Bolstered, even.
Yeah, there have been a few people who’ve missed the point and launched into the very same health lecture I lampooned in the article. And there have been some shitty comments too. The current record holder is the guy who left simply, “No thanks.” No thanks? Are women just on offer to you, and you deem them worthy of humanity based on whether or not you’d grace them with a fuck? It should come as no surprise to anyone that the accompanying photo was of a dorky middle-aged white guy.
I’ve digressed into Angryland.
Anyway, I just wanted to let everyone know that the support and positivity around this has overwhelmed me, and I’ll leave you with these lovely drawings made for me by Plunderpuss:
Hmmm… on a scale of one to Steve-O, how douchey would I be to get a tattoo of a cartoon of myself?