Chrissy Teigen posted a revealing photo on Instagram that has everyone talking
On Sunday, Chrissy Teigen shared an empowering, beautiful, and un-retouched photo of her body in its natural glory, upholding the idea that the “perfect” body is just a myth. She isn’t the first person to show off parts of herself that may not be seen as conventionally flattering, though. Last month, Rachel Hollis’ post-baby bikini pic went bonkers viral, inviting thousands of commenters to share their body image experiences and thoughts about how our narrow beauty expectations affect their lives.
Other celebrities have spoken up about body image in super positive ways —Demi Lovato recently shared an Instagram photo of her thighs with the caption, “Regardless of what society tells you these days. . .You don’t have to have a thigh gap to be beautiful. It is possible to love your body the way it is.” Several years ago, Lady Gaga uploaded a completely un-altered (and kinda NSFW) photo of herself flaunting a yellow bikini, informing her fans of how far she’s come since she was fifteen and suffered from an eating disorder. A slew of celebrity moms including Olivia Wilde, Amy Adams, and Kate Winslet have come out and shared their experiences with losing weight post-pregnancy, how much (ridiculous) pressure they face to “bounce back” right away, and how they’ve learned to embrace and love themselves as they are.
In the same positive and inspiring spirit, Chrissy Teigen posted an image on Instagram of her tummy and thighs (along with a cold beverage and her super adorbs puppy friend), which have some kitchen-injury bruises on them and stretch marks. Along with the photo, Chrissy wrote, “Bruises from bumping kitchen drawer handles for a week. Stretchies say hi!”
Posting a photo of one’s legs might not seem like a novel act, but we can’t underestimate the kind of power a celebrity (no less, a professional model) has to influence thousands of people. While the willingness to share “real” photos has been a pretty recent development, the resulting feedback has been so telling and indicative of how badly we need role models who publicly and proudly shared un-retouched versions of themselves. This trend has also proved that we all have different bodies, and they’re all 100 percent gorgeous.
Just the tremendous amount of responses for Chrissy’s “Stretchies” picture shows that “realness” coming from celebrities is refreshing, if not inspirational. The photo already has 85.6 thousand likes on Instagram and an endless scroll of encouraging, positive comments. Here are just a few:
The bottom line? Posts like Chrissy’s expound on the idea that our bodies are amazing—and some have stretch marks, and others have cellulite, and that is totally OK. Every body is a beautiful body.
Images via Instagram
