Sorry, bullies. You’ve met your match.

The other week, a very good friend of mine had the misfortune of having her photograph added to a malicious Facebook group. It was against slightly chubby to fat women in skinny jeans and her photograph of her in her amazing skinny jeans was added to the group without her knowledge, with fat phobic, trans phobic and sexist comments underneath it.

I love her reaction to it. I have pure admiration for how she dealt with it. Had that of been my picture on the Facebook group, I probably would have been very upset and been tempted to get very rage-y.

She found out who submitted her photograph to the group and emailed them. She also wrote a blog post about finding out about the group and her response to the person who submitted the photograph. Here is the link: You can’t bully me out of my skinny jeans.

It upsets me that every photograph I came across in that group was of a woman. Maybe some people think that women are the only people who wear skinny jeans and therefore that’s why they’re the only people submitted to the group, but that’s not the case. It upsets me that people place so much emphasis on what others choose to adorn their bodies with. It upsets me that we’re taught that in order to make ourselves feel better about whatever it is we feel uncomfortable/bad/curious with/about we try and make others feel the same way. It upsets me that society is so judgemental, that these thoughts are so deeply ingrained in so many of us that sometimes we’re not even completely aware that we’re expressing them.

I’m upset.

Why do you care about what people put on their body? Why do you care what people don’t put on their body? It isn’t actually physically hurting you, no matter how much you might wail about “my eyes, my eyes!”

I was I were as brave as some of these people. I wish I didn’t care what people thought of me. I look up to Natalie. I’m proud of her. I want to be as brave as she is.