This Woman Used Tights to Transform Her Body
Instagram is full of before-and-after photos featuring weight-loss success stories, booty gains, and yogis who've improved their flexibility. While progress photos can help you track your personal fitness journey and be incredibly motivating for many, some #fitspo stirs up unnecessary insecurity, particularly among people who struggle from body dysmorphia, disordered eating, or feelings of inadequacy.
It's why body-positivity advocates have taken to posting fake transformation photos, or side-by-side photos taken moments apart that only appear to feature drastically different bodies.
Milly Smith, 23, a U.K.-based nursing student and new mother, recently posted one of these photos, reaping more than 33,000 likes overnight. In the first photo, she wears her control-top tights high on her waist, creating the illusion of a flat stomach, teeny waist, and thigh gap. In the second photo, taken a few moments later, she wears the same tights low-slung, exposing her stomach:
While the difference between the photos above is jarring, it was really Milly's caption that resonated with her followers: "I am comfortable with my body in both [photos]," she wrote. "Neither is more or less worthy. Neither makes me more or less of a human being...We are so blinded to what a real unposed body looks like, and blinded to what beauty is, that people would find me less attractive within a 5-second pose switch! How insanely ridiculous is that!?"
Milly hasn't always seen things so clearly: In her Instagram captions, she's opened up about past and present struggles with depression, anxiety, self-harm, anorexia, binge eating, low self-esteem, sexual abuse, and endometriosis, a chronic illness that makes her feel "extremely, soul-crushingly fatigued."
But she's coping by using Instagram as a therapeutic outlet. "It helps my mind so much with body dysmorphia and helps me rationalize my negative thoughts," she wrote.
Milly has posted several fake before-and-after photos proving it's unrealistic to strive for the perfection you see online because many photos are digitally altered, like these:
And many feature staged illusions created by sucking in or strategic positioning:
Milly wants the world to know it's normal to look different from different vantage points - and that life is too damn short to waste time striving for a perfection that might not even exist. So remember: Every ?? body ?? is ?? beautiful. Remind someone who needs to hear it today.
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