Jessamyn Stanley has been incredibly vocal on- and offline about the importance of body positivity. And now the yoga teacher has posted a series of nude photos in an effort to clap back at fat shaming and fatphobia.
Jessamyn Stanely Poses Nude on Instagram
Stanley has shown intimate photos of her body on Instagram before. In 2019, she dropped a photo of herself wearing ThirdLove lingerie, focusing in on her stomach. "The greatest goddamn gift I've ever received has been learning to be myself," she wrote in the caption. "That's not grammatically correct but we're not in my 9th grade English class sooo. I didn't know I could do it on my own. I always thought I needed help to know myself."
Stanley previously told Health that she's fielded a lot of negative comments about her body over the years. "I cannot even begin to list all of them," she said. "They go from 'you're fat,' 'you're ugly,' 'you're disgusting,' 'you're promoting obesity,' 'you're a horrible person.' Everything you can think of to say, and then more specifically to a fat person, has been said to me."
But Stanley said that she's trying to normalize conversations around body image, as well as what can happen to bodies. "When I talk about my thigh chafing, and people were like, 'It's cool to talk about our thighs being chafed?' And I'm like, 'we all got that,'" she said. "Arm fat, as you get older, I do arm work all the time. That's just a little bat wing thing. It's happening, it's a part of getting older."
Stanley said it's important for people to realize that these things happen, and especially as people age. "We're taught to think that our bodies aren't supposed to change. That's the patriarchy," she said. "That's who's making you think your body doesn't need to change.…It's meant to shift, it's meant to grow. The more that we can lean into that, just collectively, the happier we can all be."
Stanley also shared a mental health hack she's learned to deal with people who make negative comments about her body: She reminds herself that people who try to hurt her are really just hurt themselves. "It makes me see that I can't carry the weight that other people are carrying for themselves. That's not my responsibility. And it makes it a lot easier to lift off the baggage of other people and walk on my own path."
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