It’s so great that bodies of all shapes and sizes are finally being celebrated and normalized. I think we can give a big round of applause for social media sites like Instagram, whose platforms have helped launched the careers of ordinary people turned into influencers.
This has happened to many plus-size and body positive Instagram users, whose fearlessness and openness about their bodies have helped create an inspiring and supportive community, and have also worked to shape our traditional schemes of body and beauty standards for women in mainstream media.
Nabela Noor is one of those plus-size body positive influencers that over 1.2 million people love and adore.
Through her raw and real pictures and captions on her Instagram page, as well as her YouTube videos, she preaches self-love and body acceptance, working to redefine and challenge beauty standards.
She inspires a community of women to do the same, supporting them along their own self-love journeys.
She even started her own clothing line, Zeba, that not only goes up to a 4X, but also steers clear of traditional sizing charts to change the way we view and understand size measurements.
Small becomes “brave,” medium becomes “inspiring,” and so on.
As much as she is open on her Instagram page, often baring her emotions and thoughts out to the world, she’s never posted a bathing suit photo.
That is, up until last month in August. And she had a lot to say about it.
In the Instagram video, she said, “This is my first time EVER posting myself in a bikini. This is a huge step for me in my self-love journey.”
“I decided to post via video so you can see this unretouched, plus body in action. Stretch marks, cellulite & all – it truly is a hot girl summer.”
Short, sweet, straight to the point, yet says so much. While Nabela has never been afraid to be outspoken about loving your body, it doesn’t mean there aren’t struggles.
Just a few days after, she posted her second bikini photo with a super inspiring message after receiving hateful messages on her first.
“When she doesn’t apologize for her body,” she captioned the photo.
She commented on the phenomenon that is “Instagram aesthetics,” and how they suck us into an unhealthy spiral of skinny detox teas, waist trainers, and celebrating weight loss milestones.
“This is actually why I launched @zeba in the first place,” she said. “To challenge a system that is designed to make us feel insecure for profit. To redefine beauty standards and to end this idea of waiting for confidence to come when it lives within us already.”
She continued, “Let me tell you as a plus sized woman in a bikini surrounded by Instagram goals bodies all around me, YOUR BODY IS BEAUTIFUL NOW.”
“You are more than enough NOW. Your body is worth celebrating NOW. ”
“Not tomorrow. Not next week. Today. Now. In this moment.”
“Your body deserves your love and I hope you don’t wait another second to love yourself fully and unconditionally. Whatever that may look like for you, I encourage you to do it.”
She ended, “For me, owning my body (stretch marks, cellulite and all) boldly and freely in the midst of the pressures of perfection is my very own self-love revolution. And I’m going to keep fighting.”
People loved her message and left her words of love, along with brands like Elf Cosmetics, YouTubers like Jessie Paege, and even the Co-Founder of Too Faced Cosmetics.
Nabela’s powerful message makes us all inspired to confidently rock a bikini, and that any every body is Instagram goals.
