Another day, another woman taking a bold stance in the name of body positivity. This time, it's 24-year-old British model Charli Howard—who has a history of speaking out against body shaming.
Howard's latest statement involves the model highlighting her cellulite in a recent Instagram post. "They say do something each day that scares you, so re-posting this is mine for the day," she wrote in her caption. "Despite the fact I speed-walk everywhere, squat, run, and occasionally do barre, I'm still left with cellulite." Howard goes on to discuss the shame she felt at the all-girls boarding school she attended, where she felt like she was surrounded by girls "whose bodies looked, to me, nothing less than perfect."
And images she saw in the media only intensified her feelings of insecurity. "The models and celebrities I saw didn't have cellulite either," she wrote. "And if they did, they were shamed in the tabloids because of it—or knocked off their perch by nasty journalists who probably have it themselves. As a result, I felt like my cellulite was shameful, or an oddity. It wasn't until I got older and saw other women's bodies that I realized HOW BLOODY NATURAL IT IS."
The truth is, cellulite is totally natural—and it's nothing to be ashamed of. "Cellulite is very common," Dendy Engelman, M.D., dermatologic surgeon at Manhattan Dermatology and Cosmetic Surgery, previously told SELF. "In fact, 93 percent of women have it." Other estimates place the prevalence anywhere between 80 to 98 percent. So if you have cellulite, you're not alone—far from it. Engelman said the presence of cellulite is largely genetic. Cellulite can affect anyone—curvy or thin—and doctors consider it "medically normal" to have some. So when Howard says cellulite is "bloody natural," she's right. To borrow Howard's words, cellulite is "bloody natural" and there's nothing wrong with you
See Charli Howard's Instagram in full below.
Instagram content
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- The Thing Every Woman Gets Wrong About Cellulite
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