Two years ago, Megan Crabbe, (@BodyPosiPanda), a 23-year-old from the U.K., was crash dieting when she stumbled upon Instagram's body-positive (aka #bopo) community. Although she'd been looking for #fitspo to motivate her extreme workout regime, she found women of all shapes and sizes unapologetically embracing their bodies. "It was the first time in my life that I realized that maybe being OK with my body was an option," she told Cosmopolitan.com.
If Megan's smile now is any indication, she went ahead and chose that option:
The recent video above is one of many nearly nude dance videos she's shared since. "To be able to post a video embracing all of my jelly in movement is empowering," says Megan, who once edited her photos to make herself look thinner before posting:
Now, she intentionally shares photos that emphasize features often characterized as flaws, like cellulite and belly jiggle, with her more than 343,000 Instagram followers. But her confidence didn't change overnight.
Diagnosed with anorexia nervosa at age 14, Megan spent two years in and out of hospitals and psychiatric units. "My rock bottom was being tube-fed in the hospital and my parents being told that my body could shut down at any time from the starvation," she says. "I am incredibly lucky to still be alive today."
Although she survived the incident, Megan left the hospital angry that anorexia had wasted so much of her time and that it had worried her family. It didn't help that she'd had a horrible experience when she sought professional help. ("This was nearly 10 years ago and eating disorders were still so misunderstood," she says. "I would definitely still encourage anyone struggling to seek professional support, there are wonderful mental health workers out there, I was just unlucky.")
Megan credits her dad, who served as somewhat of an amateur therapist, for ultimately helping her battle anorexia. But once she shook off her fear of food, she began binge eating, then exercising compulsively. "It wasn't until I found body positivity that I finally made peace with food, exercise, and my body," she says. A self-declared "all-or-nothing person," Megan dove into the movement, filling her social feeds with body-positive accounts, and reading up on feminism and diet culture. "The driving force was realizing that I'd had enough. I'd been through enough. I'd hated my body enough," she says. She needed to change her mind-set, and she did.
To turn her own Instagram account into a place where she could work through body-image issues and interact with like-minded followers, Megan began posting photos of herself with the goal of showing others that the body parts traditionally perceived as unflattering are actually natural, normal, and beautiful. "If my belly rolls or cellulite can help someone feel better in their own skin, then I'll post them all day long," she says.
Shortly after discovering the body-positivity movement in 2014, Megan came across a dance video tagged #DontHateTheShake posted by one of the first body-positive Instagrammers she followed, Melissa Gibson (@yourstruelymelly), a 28-year-old graduate student from Louisville, Kentucky. Dancing to Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off" to tell body shamers exactly how she handles their comments, other body-positive advocates began posting similar videos using the same hashtag. "I was inspired to do it because it was a challenge for me to be comfortable with my body not only in images but in motion," Melissa told Cosmopolitan.com. "Our bodies move and wiggle and jiggle and that is beautiful … also I wanted to celebrate what my body could do."
Although Megan was inspired by the concept, she had some reservations about joining what would come to be known as the #DontHateTheShake movement, which now has its own Instagram page. "I was still so scared of the body-shaming and slut-shaming that women who show their bodies experience so much of online," she says, "[but Melissa's] dancing videos were so joyful and free, and I knew it would be a test of my newfound body confidence to join in, so I did."
While she received some awful comments from people likening her to large mammals or suggesting she looked better when she was thinner, she's also received comments from the women she's inspired, many of which have gotten up to dance because of it. "I learned a long time ago that nobody who's happy in themselves feels the need to tear another person down on the internet; their comments say far more about them than they do about me," she says.
It's why haters haven't stopped Megan from sharing many #DontHateTheShake videos:
Now, she posts a new one whenever she feels like her Instagram page needs an uplifting break from more serious posts.
Each time she makes a video, Megan will shoot a couple of takes before posting. But she doesn't pick the video that makes her look the slimmest, if that's what you're thinking. "My favorite is always whichever one makes me smile more," she says. "I don't spend any time criticizing my body anymore, it lets me live, dance, and experience the world. It's worthy of my love for that. We should be able to live without constantly worrying about how our bodies look while doing it."
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Elizabeth Narins is a Brooklyn, NY-based writer and a former senior editor at Cosmopolitan.com, where she wrote about fitness, health, and more. Follow her at @ejnarins.
