- I'm deeply regretting this entire thing
already and it's only day one and I'm about
to cry because I'm so nervous.
(gentle music)
My relationship with my body's deeply complicated.
I want so deeply to love myself the way I am
but it is so hard.
I do everything I can to try to hide my cellulite.
You know, growing up, you're sitting next to your friends
and someone walks by and they have cellulite
and someone makes a comment about, how it's disgusting
and ewe, she should cover that up.
And then I hear that and I internalize that cause I'm like,
"Oh my god, I have tons of cellulite all over my body."
I think that now that I am a part of the media,
I can change the narrative finally.
So this week I have three major challenges.
The first one is that I'm gonna be walking around
in a very public place wearing short shorts.
Number two is going running in public
and then the third challenge is to go buy a bikini
and then wear that bikini in public and try to be
a boss-ass bitch when I'm probably dying inside.
I'm about to leave to go to work wearing my first outfit
and I am physically shaking, I'm so nervous.
Alright, so this is what I'll be looking
at all day, my cellulite thighs.
So I wear basically the same thing every day.
I wear mostly black, dresses never go
above the knee, always long sleeves.
If he doesn't care, then why should I care?
What do you think about my outfit today?
- You look hot. - I think you look amazing.
- Yeah, I don't know why you don't wear stuff like this
more often and show off those legs.
- I've never seen you wear a dress like that before
and I love it.
How do you feel?
- Exposed.
So for the first main event I walked through
a really public mall.
I'm gonna flop these bad boys around.
(laughs)
I'm not excited about it, I'm not.
I'm pretending like it's funny but it's not.
The moment I stepped out of my car
and realized what I was going to do I was like,
"oh fuck, what have I done?"
(laughs)
As I was walking through the mall
it was just tons of the worst things
you could ever think about yourself.
About an hour in, I was in the middle of H&M
and I had a really insane anxiety attack.
I don't feel comfortable yet showing my cellulite
to the public and I felt like everybody was just staring
at me and I know it's not true.
And I just didn't feel as good as I thought I would.
What made it so bad was that every time I felt good
about myself I would walk past a mirror and I would see
my reflection and I think it kept bringing me back
to reality which was like, "oh yeah, you have cellulite."
So, my parents are in town.
What do you guys think about cellulite in general?
- It's a curse.
My mother had it.
She was very petite.
Even though I feel badly about it,
I don't think anybody should be judged for having cellulite.
And we just have to learn to live with it.
And women should be kinder to one another about it.
- Today I am running in public in front of everyone.
It's already hard enough to work out in gyms.
Everyone there is totally in shape
and then here you are on a treadmill
and you feel like everything's jiggling and out there,
and everyone's staring at you 'cause you don't know
what you're doing.
But running in public, for me, is even worse.
When I finished jogging, I went home and I was just so mad
that I let people dictate how I felt about my body
for this long.
Honestly, looking back on the footage of me running,
I'm like more embarrassed about my bad form,
that I'm a terrible athlete, more than my cellulite.
(laughs)
I just had this weird sense of a calm release.
When I was walking in a bikini next to all these people
in fully clothed outfits, it felt weird for sure.
There's nothing not weird about that.
But it was a weird way of walking around being like,
(shows middle fingers).
'Cause it was almost like, if anyone did stare at me
and hated me for whatever reason, it's on them.
No one said anything mean.
If anything, people were totally normal
and didn't probably think twice and even if they did,
fuck 'em because I am so over people body shaming
and I'm so over people telling me how to feel about myself.
I'm just so over everyone telling me how my body should be
instead of me.
It's so funny how your mind can trick you into thinking
things are real when they're not.
And I don't know what really happened,
I can't read other peoples minds,
but the more honest we are about who we actually are
and what we actually look like and how we actually feel
about things, the more that we can actually change things.
When I started this challenge I was on the verge
of tears almost every day that I had to show my cellulite
to the world and then by the end, I was so free
from all the worry and all the thoughts that society
had on me and all the expectations.
And that felt fucking awesome.