This company is a great way to bring awareness to body image.
Having dealt with my share of body image issues, this was a great way to feel like I am not alone. I am in high school now and have been dealing with eating disorders for around five years now. Having an older sister, I always looked to her to be my role model. Therefore when she got skinnier I would feel the same need to drop weight.
I always felt out of place in a town that focused so much on body image. I felt like nobody else was going through my same struggles to be small. What I realize now is, I was small. I have been a size small all my life, but the constant pressure has changed my physique. After watching, counting, and purging everything I ate, I became paranoid and instead started gaining weight.
Since I am a cheerleader this was especially tough. Part of the sport is being thin, so it is easy to tumble and stunt. When i gained 15 pounds in a matter of months I went into a severe depression. Thankfully after support from friends I have overcome my disease and am regaining a HEALTHY weight.
It’s causes like these that help people like me. I am so thankful for this, because this could save someone’s life. I have wanted to design clothing with a good cause like this for a future career and am now even more motivated to do so.
I want to start off by saying thank you. Thank you for being a shining light in an industry saturated with harmful messages and innuendos. You have taken a stand against a monster of a problem in our world today, and I applaud you for that.
I along with millions of girls have at one point in my life struggled with my own body image. We live in a society where priority and importance lies in how we are perceived on the outside. I was quickly influenced by society’s narrow definition of beauty and found myself overwhelmed with high expectations and impossible goals. I felt my life was spinning out of control and I turned to an eating disorder to give me a false sense of control over my body and situation. I struggled with this eating disorder for over a year, and it accomplished absolutely nothing other than rob me from valuable time that I could have spent loving myself and working on productive ways to become a better person. Years have passed since that period in my life and I am constantly reminded of it because of the unfortunate popularity of the issue amongst young people today.
TMOOH, you have created a safe haven for those struggling with self love, insecurity, and body image issues. Not only are you creating products that promote healthy body image, but you have also built a community of people that are there to support each other and help carry this burden we all struggle with at some point in our lives. You are doing amazing things and are changing this world for the better every day that goes by.
There is nothing more rewarding and fulfilling in life than to truly understand that we were wonderfully made. Love yourself for who you are and what you will become and everything else will fall into place.
I just wanted to commend you for your focus on healthy body image. The unhealthy images our society portrays not only influences what we women unrealistically expect for ourselves, but also what many men view as attractive in return. Bringing more healthy/realistic body images to the forefront helps us all find better balance and encourages us to find a healthy middle ground to live in.
I have spent my life as the epitome of ‘big boned’ – tall, broad shouldered and big footed – which led to years of struggling with my body image. Although, in some ways I consider myself lucky. Though I severely struggled with body image in my teens and early 20s, I was finally able to come to terms with my body. The ‘American ideal’ is physically impossible for me, and so I’m happy with keeping myself healthy and fit. Moderate exercise and healthy eating makes my life pretty good, and I feel good about myself even if I still fall into the ‘plus size’ category. Many of my thinner friends still struggle with scales and strict exercise and diet regimes – in that I’m lucky, I get to have a healthy relationship with those and my body, I’m ok with me as me.
I am very inspired by the vision of TMOOH. It’s so refreshing to see a clothing brand that promotes positive body image rather than the distorted view of beauty that we are constantly bombarded with by the media. The thing that no one realizes is that as long as you have a healthy body, you should be happy there. Yes, being obese can be unhealthy, but so can being too skinny.
I never had an eating disorder, never gone on a diet, or tried to lose weight in any way. I’ve always had a high metabolism, and especially when I was younger, I was tall, but skinny. People often asked if I had an eating disorder, and even though I was healthy, it really bothered me. I wanted to be normal. I subconsciously started eating a lot more, especially junk food. I was trying to gain weight. As far as weight goes, nothing changed, but I felt a lot more unhealthy. Over time I realized that even though I’m thin, I’m also healthy, and I am completely okay with the way I am. God created me this way and I shouldn’t try to change it through unhealthy means. I feel great about my body, and I hope that TMOOH can spread positive body image all over.
Healthy body image is becoming a conversation topic in many media outlets. How is airbrusing used and do we want to know? Is the label “plus sized” or “curvy” necessary when using models of varying body shapes and sizes? While I think the conversations are great, they seems to be very focused on size, but what about age?
From left, Yohji Yamamoto, agnès b., Ann Demeulemeester.
Photo: imaxtree, Getty Images, imaxtree
My grandmother just turned 79 this past weekend and I couldn’t help but think about age and getting old after talking with her. Do I appreciate the beauty that comes with age? Will I learn to love my body as it changes, or forever attempt to remain youthful in appearance?
While I often feel like I can’t maintain the “ideal” body- I wonder how my grandmother feels. Does she ever see wrinkles, white hair and pale skin celebrated or displayed in the newspaper, on TV or on the magazine display rack? I think she is beautiful not because she looks like she is 30, but because she looks like she is 79.
What would a healthy body image look like at any age?
I have been watching Survivor forever, and after the finale I decided to look Brett up, and I learned that he had a teeshirt company. I saw this website, and I absolutely loved it. I have always been worried about my appearence and how I look, I’ve even tried starving myself and I used to cut myself before, because of wanting to look a certain way. But after seeing this website, it made me feel so good about myself. This project truly is amazing, and I want to say thank you.
I was reminded this morning that beauty is not just a conversation about what we wear, what size models we think magazines should display or what we find physically appealing or attractive. Beauty can be found in an attitude, a way of life. Our friend JJ has been filming in Africa and as I looked through his videos while eating breakfast this morning, I was struck by the title of this one.
“beauty within the slum”
Here is what JJ had to say about this video, “so far on my many journeys through Uganda and Kenya my favorite part has been this short video. This kid lives in the Namuwangu Slum just outside of Kampala, the capital of Uganda. He’s blind but is well known by all the people who work and live within in the slums as a “ray of sunshine”. Upon meeting him he wanted to play his harmonica for us, and what follows is beautiful. Thanks to someone he will probably never meet he was able to receive money to attend a special needs school outside of the slum.”
Thanks for the reminder, JJ. Beauty is bigger than a size, our clothes or an appearance.
I just wanted to say that I love your company and I admire the positive message that you are sending out to people about body image.
I am in my second year of College and I can’t remember a time that I wasn’t made fun of because I am not what magazines consider beautiful, mainly because I am not the skinniest person. Because of the way people have treated me it makes it hard for me to have confidence in myself and the way I look. There have been many times when I would come home from school and sit in my room crying because I felt like I would never be good enough to be considered beautiful.
But finding your website and reading all the positive messages you post made me smile. I look at your site all the time because knowing that there are people out there who believe in inner beauty gives me the strength to get out of bed in the morning and smile when i see my reflection instead of trying to avoid looking at it.
I’m Kat and I think that your designs are a great idea to try and help the world realize how bad eating disorders and things like that are. I am 16 and i can feel the pressure to have a perfect body. Unfortunetly this is definetly a huge problem of the 21st century and by making this company i hope that it will show everyone that you can be who you are and not feel insecure, it definetly showed me and i want to thank you for that
For awhile I felt out of place, like everyone around me had a better body type in some way. No matter how hard I tried, it would always be like that. People who did, still hated the way they looked and it made me feel even worse. TMOOH has a great message and really has inspired me. It has inspired me to love myself and I really have been. I take every compliment and truly appreciate them. I hope one day everyone will be able to grasp this. Grasp that no one is perfect and truly, loving yourself is key.
