censor my cellulite

Censor my cellulite? Photoshop my stretchmarks?? I’m talking to you, multiple clothing websites and magazines of the world. What is it with you and your obsession with photoshopping out cellulite, stretchmarks and even hips? (Hips, seriously guys?) What is it you are trying to hide? Do you not want people to know, your models have cellulite? Did you know that everybody has stretchmarks? That stretchmarks, as the name suggests is the result of your skin stretching, as you grow?

Why does cellulite have to remain a hidden thing? You want your models to be curvy, to have a big chest and a big ass but god forbid that comes

with cellulite, with stretchmarks, or, oh no, not even with thick hips?

Why are you raising a generation of children to believe that cellulite isn’t a normal thing? You are raising children to be insecure before they’ve even started their lives. I loved my stretchmarks when I saw my own mothers. When I realised, that they weren’t strange, or something that was bad, but that they were normal, and that whether you’re a size 10, or a size 20, you have them.

Now, let’s talk about hips. Please, let me talk about hips. So many models on these clothes websites and magazine covers have their hips photoshopped out? Why? Hips are not something that we need to get rid of. Trust me guys, we need hips. Your hips exist to support your body, so basically, to keep you standing and not just flopping in a puddle on the floor. Whether you have wide hips, big hips, bony hips, or wonky hips, they’re hips!!! Please, please, please tell me why they are now something else we must add to the ongoing list of things to be ashamed of?

These models, celebrities, these people on magazine covers and clothing shops, they’re beautiful. That’s the business they’re in. Whether they are plus size models, or thin models, they are beautiful, because of their flaws and because of the way their bodies hold them, and yet, despite this, the people in this toxic business are still finding ways to change the way they look, to modify their bodies and warp them.

Why is this necessary? I cannot get my head around the fact that people are so obsessed with changing the way others look? Why do you have to make people look perfect? Perfect doesn’t exist. Everybody has their own perceptions of perfect and they change all the time, but that doesn’t mean we should mould ourselves around this perception.

The point of this post? I don’t want to grow up in a world where people blur out their cellulite like it’s something vulgar. I want to idolise my stretchmarks like they’re smears of paint adorning my skin. For God sake, I want to have hips and not have to worry about them for any reason other than breaking them when I’m eighty-five.

No skin is as flawless as porcelain. No body is as flat as an ironing board. We grow, twist, bulge, we live and breathe and our bodies are evidence of that, so why edit them to ‘perfection’ when you can just love the side of perfect you already are?