Iskra Lawrence Wants You to #BoycottTheBefore

From Redbook

If you’re on Instagram, you might have seen the hashtag #BoycottTheBefore. It’s a movement, in honor of National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, to encourage woman to not post photos of themselves showing their bodies “before” (when they were suffering with eating disorders) and “after” – rather, simply post photos of themselves as they are.

Not surprisingly, body positive advocate Iskra Lawrence, who has spoken out about how she, too, has struggled with eating after she was told she was too big to model, just shared a photo celebrating the movement.

“I myself have felt the pressure to post before and after pics to validate that I too suffered but that’s not right,” she wrote. “We do not need to prove that we struggled, we do not need to feel like anyone may have struggled more or less because maybe there before and after photos aren’t as ‘dramatic.’ It’s not even about that, it’s always about how far you’ve come so @boycottthebefore is here to celebrate YOU right now! To celebrate how far you’ve come and maybe how far you still have to go – there is no perfect recovery and everyones is completely unique.”

Lawrence made a point of saying that this movement was specifically about eating disorders, not about fitness transformation photos. She also noted she wasn’t totally against before-and-after photos.

“I do however want to say I’m not against posting before and afters,” she conceded. “I have done so too and will be keeping them up. However, this is also a really great message and I hope to see lots of of you tagging me in your pics (I’ve shared pics of those who tagged me just swipe to see)… I’m forever inspired by the recovery and bopo [body pos] communities and I’m grateful for every single person who empowers each other and shares their beautiful unique spark with us all.”

The point? Women in recovery shouldn’t feel pressure to prove how far they’ve come since overcoming an eating disorder with photos – and to that end, women should never feel like their bodies (or the journeys their bodies have been on) aren’t enough.

(h/t Health)

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