Mybest friend, Denise Jolly stood on a subway train and disrobed, revealing all 311 lbs of her formerly hidden body in a black bra and panties. This was the culmination of a 30 day journey, in which she took photos of herself in various states of partial nudity at home and in her community. She called it the Be Beautiful project. Her nakedness in the photos was no more than what we might see on a Victoria’s Secret commercial or beer ad and yet it was revolutionary. In a society filled with weight stigma,that tells us that anyone with a body like hers is not worthy of love let alone visibility, her work was a reminder to herself and others that, “The active practice of loving myself exactly as I am, is radical self-love.” The photos were bold and powerful and I asked her to capture her journey in an essay for The Body is Not An Apology (TBINAA), an international radical self-love and body empowerment movement I founded almost 3 years ago.

The day after the blog went live the story went viral. Calls flooded in, Huffington Post, Yahoo, Inside Edition, Queen Latifah Show, Laura Engram Show and several more media outlets began requesting her for appearances and interviews. Her project had achieved what it set out to do, make her seen.

When the Huffington Post re-blogged the TBINAA article they included a slide show of their ten favorite “Body Image Heroes”. Nine White women’s faces scrolled across my computer screen with the final woman on the slideshow being Asian. If I am being honest, I felt the ugly twinge of jealousy creep up my spine when the media outlets started calling; when I clicked on all these fair skinned faces. After all, The Body is Not An Apology started because of my choice to post a picture of my large body in just my undies on a social media page. I wondered, “Where was the Huffington Post then?” When I looked deeper at that ugly feeling it became clear it was not a personal jealousy about my gorgeous friend being seen in her brilliance. It was the bitter reminder of how often women of color, Black women specifically, are not seen.

The same day I watched the slide show of body positive heroines, sans any black or brown bodies, TBINAA posted a clip from GLEE’s Amber Riley, dominating the cha- cha on Dancing With the Stars. There was nary a peep in the media about her beautiful example of movement, endurance and power in a large body. Several articles talked about what a great job she did. One article even mentioned she was “plus sized” but no one was mentioning television star Amber Riley as a “body image” heroine. Why? Because thesocial narrative is “she is a singing Black girl; she’s supposed to be fat.” Such an assumption renders her body an act of happenstance. Her body “just is” and therefore is not noteworthy. It would be like reporting she has a nose. “Of course she is fat!” the world says. And boldness in her particular body is nothing to aspire to. She is not Kirstie Alley, former Cheers star and DTWS alum whose fatness was such a novelty in Hollywood, that it garnered an entire HBO Series, “Fat Actress” and of course set the course for dramatic weight loss.

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http://bedaonline.com/wsaw2013/weight-stigma-diverse-populations-sonya-renee/#.UxTLV5NZ619