How the #SaggyBoobsMatter hashtag is empowering women to love their bodies
Chidera Eggerue never expected that her teenage insecurity would birth a worldwide movement, touching women all over the globe and reminding them that #SaggyBoobsMatter.
In an interview with Mashable, the 23-year-old Brit (who goes by the name The Slumflower on social media) explained that she came up with the idea for #SaggyBoobsMatter while reviewing photos of herself taken during the previous night out. She realized that her boobs looked “saggy” in her dress, which had a deep, plunging neckline, but she chose to share one photo regardless because she “looked so happy” in it. Alongside the photo she wrote about how society views women’s bodies and particularly larger breasts. She came up with her now-iconic hashtag on a whim.
"Somehow I chose to enter on the caption #SaggyBoobsMatter," Eggerue said. "I didn't know at the time that I was starting a movement, I was just expressing that saggy boobs actually matter."
She continued to use the hashtag in any post where she wore something that showed off her breasts. For Eggerue, this was simply a continuation of the body positivity she began to develop in her late teens.
The blogger told The Guardian in a July 2018 interview that she felt deeply insecure about her boobs being “too saggy” throughout her teens, and once even dreamed of getting her breasts surgically augmented to correct the perceived problem. But by the time she was 19, she had a realization that the unrealistically rounded and perky images of breasts that society perpetuates were something that “needed to be challenged”—so she chose to begin going braless.
Eggerue’s hashtag inspired other women to open up about their breasts, sharing photos and stories about their own body image. Through their stories, Eggerue learned how women view themselves based on what society teaches them about self-love and what’s beautiful.
"Women are taught that our value and our ability to be loved is wrapped around how appealing, attractive, and desirable we are. That idea is so flawed. Being worthy of love is nothing to do with what your body looks like. It's literally the least important thing," she told Mashable. "First of all, saggy boobs aren't even represented at all. And secondly, most women have boobs that aren't perky. That means there's a whole conversation that needs to be had about women's bodies, and more importantly how we see our own selves."
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The #SaggyBoobsMatter movement also inspired Eggerue to write a book. In What A Time To Be Alone: The Slumflower’s Guide to Why You Are Already Enough, released this month, the author explores the concept of self-worth and uses wisdom from her Nigerian mother (including Igbo proverbs) to help others understand the importance of self-worth and the concept of “minding your business,” which in Eggerue’s view means attending to self-care in addition to “staying out of gossip.”
“If you know yourself and you know who you are, it’s the most important aspect of self-care,” Eggerue said. “That is what guides the way of how I choose to handle certain situations. We could all do with minding our business a bit more.”
What a Time to Be Alone is available now on Amazon.
