Do you want to know the secret to getting a great beach body?

Image by Mary Fehr of www.mfehrphotography.com.

Social media may have saved Mary-Berkley Gaines’s life. About four years ago, she was at low point in her life.

“I wasn’t in college anymore and was trying to decide what I wanted to do next,” she says. “I didn’t feel confident with my body because I gained a lot of weight in college. I also was depressed.”

Then one day she was on Instagram and stumbled upon the account of plus-size model Tess Holliday (formerly known as Tess Munster).  “I saw someone who was a true plus-size woman like me—not a size 12,  but an actual size 22 woman,” Gaines says. “Seeing her doing photo shoots and being really fierce and owning all of it and not being apologetic at all about her body—that was when I knew this was something I wanted to be a part of.”

Gaines knew she wanted to be a part of the body positive movement, which encourages the acceptance of all bodies, regardless of shape, size, color, ability, etc. “Everyone is worthy of love, success, and respect no matter who they are and what they look like,” Gaines says when asked to explain what the body positive movement is all about. She soon began reading the body positive blog The Militant Baker by Jes Baker and the body positive magazine VOLUP2, which was created by plus-size supermodel Velvet d’Amour. “This idea that there is no right or wrong way to have a body—that way of thinking changed my life,” Gaines says. “It saved my life, to be honest. I was in a downward spiral of depression and I wasn’t being nice to myself. And finding that started to get me to the point where I wanted to be nice to myself. I noticed I was exercising more and eating better and starting to work toward solving my anxiety and depression problems instead of just covering them up.”

Today Gaines is the founder of the Beautiful Bodies of Birmingham Project, the Magic City’s own body positive movement. As the website, BeautifulBodiesofBham.com, explains, the goal of the project is “to inspire people to see themselves and others in a new way.” By sharing personal stories and intimate photographs that celebrate bodies of all shapes, sizes, and colors, Gaines hopes that the site, which launched in November 2015, will be a safe place for people to get the support and education they need to foster better self-esteem and improved body image.

Read the entire story at B-Metro.com.

If nothing else can motivate me to lose weight and get back in shape, I'm sure money and the threat of public humiliation will.

And so I've signed up for Scale Back Alabama. This annual statewide weight-loss contest is in its seventh year, but this is my first time to participate. Participants are to be in teams of four. If each member of your team has lost at least 10 pounds at the end of the 10-week contest, your team is entered in a drawing to win cash prizes. The top prize is $1,000 per team member!

Show me the money!

On Saturday my team and I weighed in Medical Weight Loss Solutions and then I went for an hour-long jog as soon as I left. I'm determined to shed at least 10 pounds because I don't want to be the jerk who made her teammates miss out on $1,000!

When I posted on Facebook that I had just signed up for Scale Back Alabama my cousin/BFF replied with this comment: "Javacia, you have no weight to lose."

I get this comment a lot when I mention I want to drop pounds. But I know something they don't: the number that stares back at me when I step on the scale. Most people would have a hard time guessing my weight by looking at me. The last time I was weighed at the doctor the nurse in charge looked at the number and exclaimed: "Well, that can't be right! You're so little." My response: "Well, apparently not."

There was a time when I didn't care about my weight or my BMI. In the past I've always been pretty muscular and since I know muscle weighs more than fat, I didn't give the number on the scale a second thought. Plus, I wore a size 4 or 6.

Those days are long gone. Most of that muscle has morphed to fat and I now wear a size 10 or 12.

Now, I'm not all depressed and rocking back and forth in a dark room over this. I know my weight and my dress size don't measure my worth as a woman. And I know my husband doesn't find me any less attractive. (In fact, he seems to be excited that I've gained weight. Southern men like 'em thick.) But my BMI has me on edge because it tells me I'm officially "overweight" which means I could be at risk for more health complications.

This is the part of the post when I do something I've never done before and share my weight with all my readers. I won't even tell my husband how much I weigh when he asks, so this is a big deal.

That's what I weighed yesterday afternoon and thus my BMI is around 29. The scale at the weigh-in center put me at 168 pounds. I doubt I lost half a pound in 24 hours, but just in case I did I'll be going for another hour-log jog today.

And let's hope that in 10 weeks I'll be 10 pounds lighter and $1,000 richer!

Image by Lululemon Athletica via Flickr/Creative Commons

Reese Witherspoon lied.

A few years ago in an interview with Glamour magazine, the Academy Award winning actress said that she felt much sexier as a 30-something than she ever did in her 20s. Inspired, I cut out this quote and glued it to my vision board, certain that once in my 30s I’d finally feel sexy. But 30 came and went and no such luck.  

So it was on to plan B in my quest to feel sexy – pole dancing classes! And to live up to my nickname Writeous Babe, of course, I wrote about my experience. You can check out the article here on My Scoop. 

While twirling my body around that vertical steel bar, however, I got to thinking "Is this anti-feminist?" 

Some of the feminists I admire most have argued that the sexiness offered in striptease aerobics classes is fabricated and based on the male gaze.

Sure, many women may attend pole dancing and striptease aerobics classes with a man in mind. Some of the women I interviewed for the My Scoop article admitted that they wanted to leave the class with a few ideas to bring home to their husbands. But is that really so bad? 

And with all the girlish giggling that goes on at these classes, they feel more like a slumber party or a ladies night out than anything and seem to have very little to do with impressing men. 

Furthermore, I believe that unorthodox fitness classes like these encourage women to make the time to exercise because these classes make getting fit fun; and I believe that they can help stressed-out moms feel sexy again.

What I do struggle with, though, is the idea of sexiness. When we say these classes make women feel sexy how exactly are we defining that word? I frequently ask myself: Does sexy simply mean men find me attractive or does sexy mean I love my body because it’s healthy and strong?

What I've realized is that all these years when I've been saying I want to feel sexy what I've really meant is I just want to feel confident and comfortable in my own skin, regardless of how much I weigh or what I'm wearing. Obviously, I don't need to take pole dancing fitness classes for this to happen. But while I was twisting my hips in that mirror I realized that I'm a lot more self-confident than I thought and I realized that maybe Reese Witherspoon was right after all. 

Photo Credit: Joe Shlabotnik (Flickr/Creative Commons)

Eighth-grader Julia Bluhm made history and headlines last week when her petition and protests led to Seventeen magazine pledging to not ever alter the face and body shapes of young women featured in its editorial pages. 

After hearing too many girls in her ballet class complain about their weight, Bluhm launched a petition on Change.org in April calling for the magazine to print one unaltered photo spread each month. Later she held a demonstration at the corporate offices of Hearst, the company that owns Seventeen. The petition garnered over 84,000 signatures. 

Last week the New York Times reported that. Ann Shoket, the magazine’s editor in chief, wrote in the editor’s letter in the August issue that the magazine had drafted a "Body Peace Treaty," promising not to change girls' body or face shapes (something Shoket insists the magazine has never done, anyway) and to include only images of real girls and healthy models. This is no doubt a response to Bluhm's campaign. 

As a feminist, this story makes me rejoice with the hope that perhaps we will see more and more magazines  start to feature realistic images and celebrate all types of beauty. As a writer, I can't help but think about the fact that Bluhm's crusade would not have been a success without new media. 

Not only did the Internet allow Bluhm to collect more than 80,000 signatures, but the Web also offers plenty of competition for magazines like Seventeen, as Melissa Harris-Perry pointed out on her show Saturday. With a host of blogs and online publications out there offering girls the tailored beauty, fitness, and fashion advice they could once only find in Seventeen, even this iconic magazine knows that despite its status readers are precious and their complaints need to be taken seriously. 

Many writers are afraid of what new media means for our future. Does it mean the death of newspapers, magazines and print books? I don't know. I hope not, but it could. But that doesn't mean our voices will be silenced. Julia Bluhm's story shows us that new media is a great opportunity for all of us -- whether we're activists or artists -- to make our voices heard like never before. 


Maybe you're a rebel with a cause who starts a petition like Bluhm did, or writer who publishes an e-book that inspires legions of people, or a blogger who creates an online publication that's an alternative to the magazines out there that don't seem to tell the stories of your community. 


I live in a city where many of the local newspaper reporters were recently laid off. And the newspaper at which I worked before I moved here no longer exists. So, I have good reasons to have a woeful attitude about new media, but stories like Julia Bluhm's reminds me I have a good reason to have a hopeful attitude instead.