Overcoming Body Shaming and Embracing Self-Love: A Journey Towards Inclusive Beauty

so one time i was walking with my friend um and um i ha i you know kind of was in that i was

really really like not in a good mental place and she was eating like ice cream next to me and the entire time i was

basically body shaming her and um like telling her that she was unhealthy

and um that it was um i was just like putting all this negativity on her that

and all she was doing was just eating ice cream but because i had trained my mind to

you know see ice cream and see this type of behavior as lazy bad um unacceptable i was just relaying all

this onto her and to this day i'm like mortified about the stuff i said and like um and

just like shocked that i i could have that i i let myself do that

hi my name is kelsey wu and i'm 16 years old and i'm also currently a junior at diamondbar high school

um i'll definitely say like when i was young like when i was a young kid i hated even like brushing my teeth um i

definitely did not care at all about self-care and

you know like hygiene and stuff like that because um i was a kid and all i wanted to do was play and watch tv and

um all that stuff but then um i started um you know realizing that you know this stuff is

kind of important like you kind of want to look your best you know when you go to school you kind of want to kind of

don't want your skin to you know have pimples and um you can you want to like take care of your hair and stuff like

that so um i started really like getting into beauty and

um into beauty for all the wrong reasons and it was just to make sure that i

looked you know acceptable to make sure that i looked um perfect to make sure i looked like the people i saw on social

media and stuff like that so um i definitely think being asian something about the asian culture or the

way that asian people are perceived we we definitely have a very strong strong emphasis on looks

um and i've always felt that from when i was since i was a young kid

um i mean i i saw it i think like my first experience with it was through my my

parent my mom and um through like my grandma and through the

female people asian females in my life who were you know they were reminding me they

were constant reminders in my life of how i was supposed to look and

it just became like really influenced in my mind because the main thing that you know all

a lot of um a lot of asian people obsess over is how they look the main reason why my

mother put me or one of like the big reasons why my mother put me through intense sports was so i could lose

weight and i remember just like my asian cousins and my asian aunts the beauty was a big part of it and

i definitely also see this through some of my asian friends like um my friends from school who you know have

grown up in this asian beauty standards they really really um they really are really adamant about the

way you look and um i i and i've just been influenced it through my entire life

you know as growing up i was always a bit of um like a a chubby kid like um definitely had

um it was bigger than most kids and taller as well but um i don't think that fact really hit me until

i was six and i started going to public school for the first time and i was getting

bullied by my peers because of the way i looked so that

experience really traumatized me um for the rest of my life um the rest of like

my elementary and middle school experience because it just branded into my mind that you know skinny is better

that slimmer is better and that i had to look a certain way going from that what made matters worse

was when i actually did lose a lot of weight so

um i my mom put me into this really competitive like sport called diving

and diving it's like a mix of gymnastics and swimming and it was

a lot it was a really intense sport and um i lost a lot of weight over a really short time and i kept that and as i grew

um so i would say like for a large part of like the ending years of elementary and

majority of middle school is i was in the sport and

my physique was quote unquote acceptable it was um i had a really

acceptable and thin ideal idolized body and um people praised me so much for my weight loss um

i remember like people just telling me oh you're so pretty now oh um i love your body um

you just you look amazing and that really reinforced like that um that i feel like that reinforced in my mind

more than the bullying experience did that um skinny was better because i was getting so much praise and so much love

from people um especially i would say asian aunts um i remember like one

experience was i was walking down the hall and um

the one of like my teammates mothers um she stopped me and she she like she asked me how did you lose so much

weight you look so good and i didn't really even talk to her she was kind of like a little bit of a stranger to me

and she was talking to me about my weight loss and um

that just really reinforced it that is really how at 14 years old i

got an eating disorder and really fell into one of the deepest and darkest experience of my life

nobody knew what i was going through um i think the only person that could have sensed it was my dad um and he is

the reason why i pursued recovery in the first place but other than him

no one no one really noticed in fact um when i was when when i had my eating disorder i

um i lost a lot of weight so outwardly i may have looked skinny

and healthy and you know um the perfect

body type inwardly i was the sickest i'd ever been and i didn't tell anyone about it but i

feel like the people around me could sense that i may have you know been a bit sick um

i would say like so i lashed out on people a lot um and i made really really um i was really rude

i feel like too my friends and especially my mom you know at that time since i was i feel

like that was like the most anxiety i had in my entire life um i was obsessed with the numbers so like my life became

about numbers calories the amount of calories i ate the amount of calories i burned um

all that stuff and what time i ate what time i stopped eating and um so i had to burn a certain amount of calories

every day and my mom actually walked in on one of my workouts and i was doing this workout and she walked in and she

distracted me and then all i could think about was because she distracted me i just wasn't

able to burn like five two calories and i just lost the opportunity to burn like five or two

more calories aka equaling that i just lost the opportunity to lose more weight and i

flipped out on her all she did was just come in and while into my room while i was breaking out but she didn't did

nothing else and i i like exploded on her and it just goes to show that like

um it really like these type of behaviors and types of attitudes i was portraying

during this time and i was acting like this even though physically i looked

i looked the best that i had looked in a couple of years what do you hope we'll change about how

we evaluate the future i want beauty to

be all inclusive it's where beauty doesn't have a standard um beauty can be anything and

anything and anybody it can be all shapes in all sizes it can be all colors it can be all sexualities

it can be anything that it that the person who holds it who defines

it is and i wouldn't say that i have like a 100 good relationship with myself and um

with my body right now but what i want is that i can get to a place in my life where

i hear this and i and i you know i hear um those old standards and those old talks

of negativity and i'm able to go past it and i'm able to still accept myself and love myself um

no matter what i am what i look like who i look like what point in time what age i am what

size i am whether i lose weight or i gain weight i want to be at a point where i'm

whatever happens i still feel the exact same way that i feel about myself in any situation

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