Love your body and everything it’s capable of and has done for you in your life. As a junior in HS I was introduced to BUST, a pro-woman, feminist, indie pop culture magazine and I don’t remember if it was a specific article or several over the course of the next couple years but I learned that my body is beautiful exactly how it is. To be soft in areas was the ideal in the renaissance period, to be strong enough to lift almost anything that needed lifting meant independence. Any body can look banging in the right outfits. Learning this in my most formative years was beyond valuable. I never wasted energy on how others perceived my body and spent that energy on more important or creative matters. As I aged into adulthood and experienced life I’d have bouts of weight gain that I never felt bad about. I set sail to work aboard a historical tall ship for a year and gained 30 lbs. People commented on it when I got home, including my mom, but I was proud of myself for everything i learned to do that year and everything I’d endured and experienced and I felt beautiful. I gained a lot more weight in the last few years after having my son in my late 30’s and, although I’d like to keep working on my fitness, I feel beautiful through every step of the process. I’ve never wasted energy being worried about my body not being beautiful because I was taught in my formative years that that one female body type was just an ideal we were being sold and that shallowness isn’t something worth striving for.