What is Love Thy Belly?

Love Thy Belly is dedicated to cultivating a culture of love and appreciation for all body shapes and sizes. We aim to challenge societal norms and stereotypes, fostering a world where every individual can confidently love and embrace their unique body, through advocacy, education, and awareness initiatives.

Our Mission

It all began with a photoshoot!

Love Thy Belly started as a photo shoot in September 2018 as a f*ck you to societal norms and expectations about what a good body is. I was struggling with my own body image, understanding who I am, what my body is, and what it’s capable of; I was struggling with accepting my body for what it was. It was my way of silencing every voice, save my self-loving own!

We asked:

"Acceptance and self love, understanding your body, the beauty it holds, a healthy plus size body, all bodies can be healthy and fit, loving thyself-loving your temple, living life and loving it "

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"Fairen, she has been trying to get women and all bodies to believe in themselves. I help as much as I can for as long as I can i hear it in rooms you aren't in."

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"Acceptance of all bodies and yourself!"

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"Acceptance and self love, understanding your body, the beauty it holds, a healthy plus size body, all bodies can be healthy and fit, loving thyself-loving your temple, living life and loving it " 💜 "Fairen, she has been trying to get women and all bodies to believe in themselves. I help as much as I can for as long as I can i hear it in rooms you aren't in." 💜 "Acceptance of all bodies and yourself!" 💜

What does Love Thy

Belly mean to you?

"Body Acceptance"

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Fairen (I love Fairen, I love her spirit and her energy, she absorbs and emits what’s in the room). I am here because of you.

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" Representation of all bodies especially for kids ."

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"Body Acceptance" 💜 Fairen (I love Fairen, I love her spirit and her energy, she absorbs and emits what’s in the room). I am here because of you. 💜 " Representation of all bodies especially for kids ." 💜

"Self-actualization and self-ownership; loving yourself to your destination and taking accountability for what you are doing and the impact you have."

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"Liberation, acceptance for yourself and others like you self love and self-respect"

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"Liberation as a fat person, not being able to shop off the rack, appreciation, adoration, soft belly big belly round belly, I love it here!"

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"Self-actualization and self-ownership; loving yourself to your destination and taking accountability for what you are doing and the impact you have." 💜 "Liberation, acceptance for yourself and others like you self love and self-respect" 💜 "Liberation as a fat person, not being able to shop off the rack, appreciation, adoration, soft belly big belly round belly, I love it here!" 💜

Let me run it back: In 2015 I started a fitness journey that reinforced these toxic ideas about my body: If you have a fat body or a large body, if you have a belly, if you have rolls, saggy boobs, stretch marks or cellulite, that there’s something wrong with your body and that you are undesirable. These ideas, along with restrictive dieting, suppression, and using fitness as a reward/failure system, resulted in me becoming unhealthy mentally and spiritually, despite the well-meaning compliments of others encouraging my results. All those intuitive compliments and comments reinforced this notion that my body was somehow better because it was smaller.

Don’t get me wrong: We all need physical activity, food, and water, but I needed to redefine my relationship with those things from a place of intuitive fulfillment: Physical activity as a means for joyful movement, water as a loving commitment to supporting my constitution (A significant percentage of your body is water) and food as a pleasurable fuel source. Shifting these relationships, in the long run, allows me to eat foods I enjoy (I to eat good, flavorful food!), intuitively fuel my body, and give it the movement it needs without harming my psychological or spiritual health.

Of course, it would have been nice if I had figured this all out before I gained weight in 2018 while working 3 jobs and being in a gaslighting abusive relationship. The positive reinforcement from my weight loss I told you about earlier quickly became a negative self-prison for my weight gain which was suffocating. But finally, enough was enough, I wasn’t going to accept the lie that I “wasn’t worthy of love because I’m fat”, the backhanded compliments/comments, the abuse, the self-gaslighting that fat is bad and skinny is good, or any narrative that tried to tell me that I wasn’t worthy or capable because of my weight; Hence the biggest fuck you to self-hate and societal norms and expectations, Love Thy Belly, was born to drown out every voice, but my self-loving own.

The word thy means your and because I have a deep love for Shakespeare and the Old English language (a topic for another day), my constant fake-it-till-you-make-it self-love reminders of “love your belly”, “love your body”, “love your belly”, “love your body”, became the hashtag #Lovethybelly under the photos of my September 2018 photoshoot. The hashtag quickly became a formal brand (let's bffr: that first shoot was a LTB brand shoot) as I came to realize that everyone struggles with body image issues, even those who society says are “good” or the standard of beauty.

Now Love Thy Belly is a movement that seeks to promote body positivity and self-acceptance, with a specific focus on cultivating a culture of love and appreciation for all body shapes and sizes. LTB strives to create a supportive community that fosters inclusive conversations, education, and empowerment, empowering individuals to embrace their bodies with kindness and compassion. Through advocacy, education, and awareness initiatives, we aim to challenge societal norms and stereotypes, fostering a world where every individual can confidently love and embrace their unique bodies.

For more of the story, please watch this Instagram live (March 2023) or this Interview I did with Drizzle of SSDTV (October 2022)!