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Why And How I’m Shunning The ‘Summer Body’

‘Hot girl summer’, or as I like to call it ‘chub-rub’ season, is upon us and with great heat comes great pressure to be skinny. Summer, for most, is sun, sea and fun but it’s also the season that gets us the most hot and bothered about our appearance. 

Having a ‘summer body’ is a phrase I’ve assumed means signing up for intense fitness classes, nutrition programmes, calorie counting, crash dieting and (usually) an unused gym membership. Just thinking about it is exhausting! It’s unsustainable and unhealthy; especially if like me, you already have some body issues to resolve. 

I grew up in a family of six: my parents, an older sister who is now in medical school, a younger sister who is literally a model and the youngest sibling, who is a boy (in some households being a male is all you need to be special). I, on the other hand, am not a model, an academic or a male. I was, however, overweight. That was my marker as a child: “The one who ate all the pies.”

As you can imagine, I had everything I needed to be an insecure child and let that carry through to my adult life and yet here I am, working in the fashion industry and holding my own (according to standards set by me, for me).