Demi Lovato is warning their fans about the harmful effects that “compliments” about weight loss can have on one’s mental health. 

Around 2 a.m. PST on May 23, the pop star posted a lengthy Instagram story explaining how even the most “pure” intentions can be destructive. “Idk who needs to hear this but complimenting someone on their weight loss can be as harmful as complimenting someone on their weight gain in regards to talking to someone in recovery from an eating disorder,” Lovato wrote in their first slide. “If you don’t know someone’s history with food, please don’t comment on their body. Because even if your intention is pure, it might leave that person awake at 2 am overthinking that statement…”

Lovato, who recently came out as nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, has spoken out about their personal struggle with an eating disorder on numerous occasions. Now, they’re asking fans to remember that they are “more than the shell for my soul.”  

While a compliment might initially “feel great,” Lovato explains how it can be reductive and cause a spiral of negative thoughts. “Does it feel great?  Yeah, sometimes,” they wrote in the second slide. “But only to the loud ass eating disorder voice inside my head that says ‘See, people like a thinner you’ or ‘if you eat less you’ll lose even more weight.'” 

Lovato continued, “But it can also sometimes suck because then I start thinking ‘Well, damn. What’d they think of my body before?’ Moral of the story: I am more than the shell for my soul that is my body and every day I fight to remind myself of that, so I’m asking you to please not remind me that that is all people see of me sometimes.”

If you or someone you know is battling an eating disorder, please contact the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) at 1-800-931-2237, go to NationalEatingDisorders.org, or text ‘NEDA’ to 741741.

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Khloé Kardashian recently released a lengthy statement about that viral unedited photo, but people on Twitter and Instagram aren’t ready to let go just yet.

If you’re not familiar, let me catch you up to speed. Earlier this week a candid bikini pic of Kardashian started making the rounds. Most fans loved it, but Kardashian’s team was actively trying to take it down. After the incident Kardashian released some “unfiltered” videos of her body that she approved of on Instagram along with a statement about her history with body image issues.  

“Hey guys, this is me and my body un-retouched and unfiltered,” she wrote on Instagram and on Twitter. “The photo that was posted this week was beautiful. But as someone who has struggled with body image her whole life, when someone takes a photo of you that isn’t flattering, in bad lighting, or doesn’t capture your body the way it is after working [too] hard to get it to this point—and then shares it to the world—you should have every right to ask for it not to be shared—no matter who you are.”

Kardashian continued, “In truth, the pressure, constant ridicule, and judgment my entire life to be perfect and to meet other’s standards of how I should look has been too much to bear. ‘Khloé is the fat sister.’ ‘Khloé is the ugly sister.’ ‘Her dad must not be her real dad because she looks so different.’ ‘The only way she could have lost that weight must have been from surgery.’”

The reactions on social media are mixed. On the one hand, people have sympathy for the body-shaming Kardashian has endured over the years. On the other, the Kardashian-Jenners have hundreds of millions of Instagram followers; Khloé herself has 136 million. Their apparent use of filters and photo editing on their posts—especially if they’re not fully owning up to it—only contributes to unattainable and unhealthy body standards. (In her post Khloé Kardashian copped to loving “a good filter, good lighting, and an edit here and there.” Take from that what you will.) 

“This was raw and honest,” journalist Katie Couric replied in Kardashian’s comments, “but I agree with those who say the nonstop procedures and constant filters are promoting unrealistic and harmful beauty standards.”

Privilege is also a factor here. The Kardashian-Jenners can, in theory, use the best resources available to achieve their looks: dietitians, personal trainers, private chefs, photo studios for the perfect shot, etc. It isn’t just a matter of “working hard,” as Kardashian wrote in her post. 

And yet Kardashian is in the business of selling her look. While on one hand promoting “body acceptance” with her jeans brand Good American, she hosts the problematic series Revenge Body and sells Flat Tummy shakes on Instagram. It’s not unreasonable to think a fan would buy a product like that in the hopes of looking like a Kardashian. But it’s not that linear. There’s obviously more to it and fans are looking for the family to admit that.

Jameela Jamil sums it up best: “I’m extremely sorry for what we all watched happen to you over the past decade,” Jameela Jamil tweeted. “It’s so unacceptable. Now would be a great time to throw diet culture in the fuck it bucket, stop editing photos, admit to the help you get to look how you do, and be transparent with your fans.”

When Shelly Anand was pregnant with her daughter, she found out her friend’s daughter was being bullied at kindergarten for having a mustache. “It instantly bought back all these memories of being tormented as a kid,” says Anand. 

From the age of 11, Anand, who is now an immigration and labor rights attorney, was similarly teased, resulting in a 20-year journey of hair removal that included threading, shaving, waxing, and bleaching her body hair. That odyssey of ripping, smoothing, and plucking—“it doesn’t have to be the answer,” she says. “The answer can also be changing the culture.” 

To do her part, Anand wrote a children’s book titled Laxmi’s Mooch. (Mooch means mustache in Hindi.) It centers on a girl named Laxmi, who does indeed have hair on her upper lip. At recess, classmates point out to Laxmi that she has whiskers like a cat. She starts to notice hair on her arms, legs, and the rest of her body. With her parents’ help, Laxmi realizes that hair is natural and grows all over our bodies, regardless of gender or race.

Anand’s book release in March 2021 comes 12 months into a pandemic where many are confronting their relationship with body hair amid salon closures. At the same time, artists and activists are pushing the body-positivity discussion to include body hair, a highly stigmatized yet completely natural feature of human bodies. Recently magazine covers have featured the likes of actor Maitreyi Ramakrishnan casually sporting arm hair and activist Esther Calixte-Bea in a dress revealing her chest hair.

Calixte-Bea had seen a sprinkle of media images of women with hairy underarms, but she had never seen any with chest hair. The Canadian artist felt isolated as she silently struggled. She would wax it off and experience painful ingrown hairs and bumps—only to find the hair grow back thicker and darker. She would instinctively pull up her shirt in constant fear that someone might catch a glimpse. The never-ending regimen of electrolysis, shaving, waxing, and epilating made her feel like she was at war with her own body. “I was tired of having to go through so much pain just to be beautiful,” she says, “I didn’t want to be in this world anymore.”

Gradually, Calixte-Bea turned to positive affirmations, prayer, and art to reframe her attitude toward herself. In 2019 she removed all the old pictures from her Instagram account and started fresh. She posted a photo of herself in a lavender dress, baring her chest hair for all to see. It wasn’t her secret anymore. “[It was] kind of like baptizing myself, reborn into this new person,” Calixte-Bea says. “This person is truly who I am.”

She named the series of self-portrait photos in the dress of her own design the Lavender Project. The collection challenges conventional notions of femininity and beauty. Since its inception, hundreds of messages of support from women all over the world have poured in. “It’s funny, because they all thought they were alone,” Calixte-Bea says. Eventually, her art and activism earned her the cover of Glamour U.K. in 2020—the first woman to be featured on the cover of a major magazine with chest hair.

She was overjoyed at the possibility that her image could inspire other women to begin their own self-love journey with their body. Like Anand, she had grown up in a society where images of beautiful women did not include body hair. “I was like, Finally this is happening,” Calixte-Bea says. “This was needed.”

Maren Morris is calling out one of the most pernicious and outdated phrases plaguing modern motherhood: “getting your body back” after birth.

Morris, who welcomed her first child, a son, with husband Ryan Hurd just over a year ago, took to Instagram to show herself relaxing in bed in a simple bra and underwear. She wrote in the caption, “Am never saying ‘trying to get my body back’ again. no one took it, i didn’t lose it like a set of keys.”

Ex. Act. Ly. Getting a beach body, getting the body you want, getting your body “back” after a baby…it’s nonsense. We are born into the only bodies we will ever have, and they grow and change throughout our lives, as do we. There is no losing them; they can’t “come back.” And if a body grows a baby’s body, that’s amazing, not a “loss.”

Morris continued, “The pressure we put on mothers to ‘snap back’ is insurmountable and deeply troublesome. you are and always were a fucking badass. and yeah, I’m proud.” No, we’re proud of you, Maren!

The country singer also posted a picture of herself working out at home, because fitness is lifelong and not about size.

Maren Morris not the only famous mom fed up with post-natal diet culture. Jennifer Garner, who has three children with ex-husband Ben Affleck, recently spoke out about her own body image, saying, “There are some incredible women whose bodies just, no matter how many babies they have, they bounce right back to that slim-hipped, no stomach…physique, and I’m so happy for them. I am not one of them. That is not my gig.”

As Garner put it, “I can work really hard, and I can be really fit, and I will still look like a woman who’s had three babies, and I always will.”

And there’s not one single thing wrong with that!

Warning: This post contains language about self-harm. 

Whenever Billie Eilish has encountered body-shaming, she’s always stood up for body positivity, even showing a video on the subject during her 2019 tour. Like many people, she has an evolving relationship with her body, and she opened up about this in a new profile for Vanity Fair. 

When asked about that viral tank top incident, Eilish said, “I think that the people around me were more worried about it than I was, because the reason I used to cut myself was because of my body. To be quite honest with you, I only started wearing baggy clothes because of my body.”

Eilish attributes her ability to deal with this recent round of scrutiny to improved mental health and well-being. “I was really, really glad, though, mainly, that I’m in this place in my life, because if that had happened three years ago, when I was in the midst of my horrible body relationship—or dancing a ton, five years ago, I wasn’t really eating,” she said. “I was starving myself…I remember taking a pill that told me that it would make me lose weight and it only made me pee the bed—when I was 12. It’s just crazy. I can’t even believe, like I—wow. Yeah.”

It’s not just celebrities; thanks to social media, anyone can be studied and shamed for their looks, at any time. This lack of control and privacy, of course, gets to Eilish, who told VF, “I thought that I would be the only one dealing with my hatred for my body, but I guess the internet also hates my body.” She then added, “The internet hates women.”

It certainly can feel that way sometimes. We’re just glad Billie Eilish is in a place where she can cope and has people around her to help on days she can’t.

This was a different time, one that was about the perfect body not about body positivity. We were in the business of aspiration and perfection and a type of beauty that you had to strive for. As models, we were supposed to represent this ideal of beauty—I guess this one tiny thing didn’t fit. It does make you feel like, “Am I not good enough?” Throughout my career, people have retouched my belly over and over sending the message “that’s no good—we’re going to hide it.” They didn’t feel like it was the perfect image and it made this tiny imperfection bigger in my head.

Growing up, I was always insecure about my body because I stood out. I had these big teeth and I was taller than all the girls and all the boys and had these skinny limbs where everyone else seemed to have curves. When you’re that young and your body is at all different, you don’t really know how to work with it, how to make it your own—you need coaching, you need guidance.

When I started working with photographers at 15, I was faced with all my fears and things I was so insecure and shy about. But I got that guidance. It was like, “No, you have a beautiful smile. Smile! We want you to smile.” Then they said, “You have good long legs. You should be showing them off and wearing short skirts.” I was like, “Really? Me?” At that age, it gave me a lot of confidence to embrace my body. It made me feel really good. It really meant a lot to me. So when that same industry told me this specific part of my body was something to be hidden, I believed them.

Now we’re in a different time in the fashion industry that’s all about embracing who we are and the imperfections that make us beautiful. My third pregnancy has given me the opportunity to finally feel free in my body. This is a vulnerable time, an intimate time, for all of us. We’re all at home with ourselves with time to reflect on the things that are important—especially if you have children. What are you teaching them? What are you passing along? I don’t want to pass on the idea that beauty means perfection.

Personally, I love what happens to my body during pregnancy. It’s a beautiful, feminine, sensual time. When I give birth and when I’m pregnant, I really feel like a woman. It’s like, “Wow. I can do that. I’m so strong. I pushed this, I carried this, I’m breastfeeding this, I’m giving this person life.” It’s a Wonder Woman feeling. And it’s your right to enjoy that. Celebrate it. Document it. Frame it.

I’m blessed that I am able to get pregnant, and that I get to do this for the third time—maybe my last time—so I wanted to take some pregnancy photos. I wanted them to be intimate, personal, shot in my home. It was my clothes. It was how I wanted to be photographed. And it was how I wanted to be seen.

Lizzo took to TikTok on December 8 to open up about something we all go through: having insecurities about our bodies. 

“I came home and took my clothes off to take a shower, and I just started having all these really negative thoughts about myself, like, ‘What’s wrong with me? Maybe all the mean things people say about me are true. Why am I so disgusting?’ Hating my body,” the singer-rapper said in a video.

She continued, “Normally, I would have some positive thing to say to get me out of this, but I don’t, and that’s okay too. I think these are normal [thoughts]. They happen to everybody. They happen to the best of us. We are the best of us. I just have to know tomorrow, how I feel in here is gonna change. I can only hope it changes for the better. I know I’m beautiful, I just don’t feel it. And I know I’m gonna get through it.”

Watch Lizzo’s video for yourself, below: 

Lizzo took to the platform the next day to say she “woke up feeling better.” She then included a video of herself absolutely serving in a pair of bra and underwear. 

“Not 100% but I’m getting there,” she added. “Gave the parts of me I hated last night a rub & a hug issss a new day.”

I relate to Lizzo’s posts on a deep level. Often internet body positivity is presented in a very, “Yaaas, girl,” two-dimensional format. But it runs deeper than that. Sometimes the fatphobic rhetoric that runs rampant in our culture gets to us—even those who practice radical self-love and body acceptance, like Lizzo. We’re only human, after all. 

Lizzo has the right idea here. When these negative thoughts happen, it’s important to have compassion for yourself. Just know that you’re not alone in this battle.