20 Years Later, I Still Need Body Positivity

This story is part of our Aughts Effect package, celebrating 20 years of Popsugar and enduring culture. Read all the stories here. In 1999, I was watching MTV when I saw Mariah Carey in her 'Heartbreaker' video in low-rise jeans. I ran to my closet and cut the waistband off my own jeans, feeling like I'd cracked a fashion code. However, I couldn't bring myself to show my belly at school, so I put a longer shirt over them anyway, hiding everything. As a plus-size teenager in the early 2000s, I learned that girls with bodies like mine didn't get the happy ending. Not the guy, not the dream wardrobe, not visibility in the glossy version of adulthood I watched on big and small screens. Every rejection, every uninvited comment, every closed door became proof that my weight made me unworthy. The anxiety that followed me every morning, dressed with me, followed me from high school into college. Then, around 2006, I found body positivity in a downtown Manhattan nightclub, where plus-size women weren't the exception in the room, they were the room. I wondered what it would feel like to carry that mindset outside those four walls and into my life. The first time I tested it was wearing a halter dress to a party, without a backup cover-up. This experience changed everything for me. The BBW parties ultimately weren't my scene, but an inclusive, body-positive space like that changed everything. I began to explore radical ideas like not covering or hiding my body, and I started writing about it on my website. Women started leaving comments, then emails, then their own stories, unprompted, like they'd been waiting for someone to go first. I realized I wasn't alone until women started telling me they felt the same way. Those essays became conversations, conversations became friendships, and friendships became a community I could stand inside of. In 2015, that community became The Curvy Con, a plus-size fashion convention during New York Fashion Week. One weekend a year, your body stops being a liability.