Being a lifelong fan of Hillary Duff since her childhood, our MUSE, Julia Berit, was blown away by the actresses recent ‘bare-all’ photo spread for Women’s Health magazine. Julia admitted that due to the lack of representation, she was curious as to what the images would look like if taken of a woman of her size. So, after reaching out to numerous friends to assist in styling, shooting and even the renting of a space to provide the perfect backdrop, the plan was underway. Little did she know, what began as a passion project for her own personal journey of body acceptance would became something significant within the community.

Julia posted her gorgeous images to her instagram account with the following caption;

“There is no “before and after” or comparison happening here, just the celebration of different bodies being EXACTLY as they are! We as women have been trained by the media to pick apart our flaws and be on an endless search for ways to “fix” our bodies. To mould them into something they may have never meant to be in the first place. But what if we EMBRACED those differences instead of trying to mould them into all being the same!“

When the photos were shared, our MUSE was met with an outpouring of support from people who were overjoyed to see representation of their body type. Julia saw that her insecurities became the things that her followers connected most with, telling Yahoo:

“They had never seen someone who looked like them, like their body shape. I don’t have the really crazy hourglass body, I gain weight in my stomach first and that’s completely OK, I have a bigger chest and I don’t have the crazy hips. Those were all things I was really insecure about at one point, so seeing all these reactions, people saying that my body looks like theirs and it was making them cry, looking at the images and feeling beautiful, was the most insane experience. I never expected to be that form of representation for people and getting to be that is just mind-blowing to me”.

Shamefully, instagram removed the carousel of images Julia shared for “adult sexual solicitation” something that is sadly uncommon for plus size women to experience when posting photographs in underwear or bikinis, or simply just skimpy outfits. However, since Julia’s interview with Yahoo, her post has been reinstated to her feed and Women’s Health reposted her content.

Julia wanted everyone to know that;

“A healthy body can look like this too”.

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