13-Year-Old Bravely Tweets About Very Real Fear Many Women Face at the Beach
By:
With Memorial Day behind us, it’s nearly Summer.
Yet this time of year brings more than warm weather: it brings a bit of anxiety related to ensuring your body is ready for the beach.
One teenager is very familiar with beach body anxiety and went viral for facing her fears.
British teenager Paris Harvey tweeted photos of herself in a swimsuit at the beach. “I faced my biggest fear today and went to the beach in a swimsuit,” she wrote. It seems her tweet resonated with a lot of people, as it has been retweeted over 46,000 times and has over 330,000 likes.
“I get bullied a lot because of the way I look,” Harvey told Yahoo Style, referring to why she decided to post the tweet. “I hadn’t been to the beach in ages because of the anxiety I feel when I go.”
People on Twitter have been praising Harvey for her courage — with many tweeting their support and thanks to Harvey for sharing something so personal.
yaaaas girl, fuck what anyone else says and go make good memories 😋
— f🥀 (@customcabello) May 29, 2017
However, there were some who were critical and attempted to body-shame her but, thankfully, other Twitter users were swift to call those haters out.
Harvey’s viral beach photos are a product of societal pressures for women to look a certain way - and it's felt by 98 percent of girls.
Moreover, seven in 10 girls believe that they aren’t good enough when it comes to to their physical appearance.
Harvey can speak directly to this, as she explained to Yahoo Style: “I feel there’s a stigma against people who want to feel comfortable who are bigger...I thought if I covered myself up then people wouldn’t bully me.”
These pressures and stigmas can have unfortunate yet unsurprising results as one in four girls have been clinically diagnosed with issues like depression, eating disorders, and more.
What Harvey and her brave tweet embody is that a little self-love goes a long way — and it’s contagious.
Others were compelled to share their own body positive photos rocking swimsuits in solidarity.
Harvey hopes that sharing pictures of herself can show that, yes, people of different sizes can be seen in swimsuits — and that's a very good thing.
Putting on a bathing suit when your body type is not idea is nerve racking but you can't let size dictate what you wear #bodyposi 💕 pic.twitter.com/ws91v8pB0J
— Emily Hutcherson✌🏻️ (@emily_h143) May 30, 2017
