I was in seventh grade when a boy in my class me told that I had a "stripper body" for the first time.
That alone instilled in me a slight sense of insecurity about the way I looked. All the other kids laughed, and I was ostracized for it. Back then, I looked up to entertainers like Aaliyah, Ciara, Alicia Keys, and Beyoncé. Then, representation for thicker girls was far and few between, with the exception of Miss Jill Scott and Ashanti. Still, growing up with womanly features was not something that was celebrated or met with flattery.
From my experience, there were always prejudices attached to young women with full figures.
I've had boys lie and say they had sex with me as early as grade school. I can't say it changed much as I've gotten older. I've had guys lie on me in college and as recently as a year ago. (Note: I didn't say "men" because men don't lie about women they have or haven't slept with.) Because of the way I looked, the lies people told themselves and others were perceived as truths. My family was no exception.
Although my mom didn't give me the talk until she was certain, I know she had speculated long before I was "sexually active." And my dad, being a dad, made me buy baggy pants and oversized clothes that were nothing like what the other girls my age wore. Fast-forward, I'm in my mid-twenties and, most of the time, I'm still camouflaging my silhouette under the illusion of baggy clothes to keep from attracting the "wrong" attention.
As I'd gotten older I thought:
My body is something I should love unconditionally because it accentuates my beauty.
I should be able to dress in whatever way I want and how I please without having to consider the opinions of others. But I found that overcoming years of ridicule and self-consciousness was not that simple, and I could just as easily slip back into feeling self-conscious when paid one single compliment about my figure.
I imagine those that tell me that I look good and that I look like I went to Dr. Miami for my surgery, are doing so out of the kindness of their hearts. But it's not comforting. Popular opinion determined that being thicker is better. But years of being teased about my weight are not so easily forgotten. And years from now, when the body positive movement is a thing of the past, then what?
The body-positive movement is great, but I've had to focus more on being self-accepting as opposed to being societally accepted.
That means fully accepting myself regardless of your size, what's trending, and how others may view me. To overcome that self-consciousness that has been lingering for so many years, I had to learn self-ownership; that this body is my vehicle and I am always more than what meets the eye.
That means responding with compliments from others by paying them back.
That meant improving my self-talk and reminding myself that my self-acceptance is love.
And that love is unconditional.
Being mindful of this has led to a change in the interactions I have with those of the opposite sex.
I've learned that while I can't control what other people do or how they see me, I can control how I respond and how I view myself. Wearing that confidence has helped me recognize the difference in how men approach me and the "wrong" attention I get from the kind of guys my dad was so determined to protect me from. There's a huge difference between what boys do and what quality men do.
Quality men know that a woman who has it knows she's has it.
And by "it," I don't mean a certain body type or look but a sense of self-worth and undeniable confidence. A quality man will require more than a nice body and a beautiful face to hold his attention, complimenting you on other flattering attributes. He knows that stimulating conversation is far more appreciated than empty compliments.
Fully embracing who I am in my entirety, leaves little room for self-doubt and insecurity. And that was an important first step to loving me for me. While changing the way I viewed interactions and interests from men was significant in changing my perception of my beauty and my worth, I had to come to terms with the woman in the mirror.
I had to love the thickness of my thighs, appreciate the way they rub together, rarely apart, and perpetually in a state of meeting. I had to love the width of my hips and the way my booty jiggles in sync with the cadence of my walk. I had to love the parts of me the world celebrated so easily, but the parts of me I deemed hard to love. I reclaimed them as aspects of me that make me feminine, womanly, a Queen.
Some days I'm still insecure, but there's nothing as healing and reaffirming as the love I give to me. It's through that love and reclamation that I'm able to wield the sword of my true power.
xoNecole is always looking for new voices and empowering stories to add to our platform. If you have an interesting story or personal essay that you'd love to share, we'd love to hear from you. Contact us at submissons@xonecole.com
RELATED
Skylar sees things differently. At the time, she was shooting content on her iPhone. Temi came into the picture with a new perspective, an understanding of tech, and, eventually, a camera. “He doesn't give himself enough credit,” Skylar says. “He wasn't just my tripod. He wasn't just standing behind the camera and going ‘click.’ He was giving advice. He was giving me insight to how I could look at things from a different perspective. And I was like, 'Oh, he’s an artist.' I think it was maybe a heartbeat of that kind of energy of like, ‘Baby, can you take this picture?’ And it turned so quickly into, we're partners. We can work together in a way where we're advancing each other's creative thinking.”
The pair often says they’re two sides of the same coin. Skylar is an Aquarius. She attended art school, paints, and loves poetry. She’s more than happy to let the couple’s management firm and agency, Kensington Grey, handle their admin work. And, she loves to sleep in. Temi, on the other hand, wakes up early. He’s a Virgo. He loves a to-do list and regularly checks in on the couple’s brand partnerships spreadsheet to make sure everything is on track.
Because his storytelling was steeped in his love of technology, he didn’t always think of himself as a creative person. “Where I [am] the dreamer who wants to pluck things out of the sky and spend all day with my head in the clouds, Temi [is] so good at grounding me and helping me figure out how to make things make sense on paper. We just work together in such a complimentary way,” Skylar says.
It’s been more than six years since Brooklyn-based couple Temi and Skylar started dating, and nearly four since they cemented their working relationship. On TikTok and Instagram, the couple’s travel, fashion, and home content regularly rack up hundreds of thousands of views. They’ve worked with brands such as Coach, Aesop, Away, and Liquid IV, bringing their vibrant perspectives to every campaign they execute. Still, nearly two years since both Temi and Skylar committed to full-time content creation and creative directing, the couple says their romantic connection remains their priority.
“We told each other we would much rather go back to full-time jobs and preserve our relationship than to be full-time freelancers, barely getting a night's rest [and] barely kissing each other because we're so busy shooting,” Skylar says.
Working from home can make it hard to separate work from personal life for any entrepreneur. It can be even more challenging when your business partner is also your lover. Temi and Skylar had already used couples therapy as a tool to help them effectively communicate with one another. When they ran into challenges while working together, their therapist helped them set physical boundaries to help combat the issues.
"We told each other we would much rather go back to full-time jobs and preserve our relationship than to be full-time freelancers, barely getting a night's rest [and] barely kissing each other because we're so busy shooting."
“It actually took us doing very specific physical things to create boundaries between work and play in our relationship,” Skylar says. “So, for instance, we will only have conversations about work when we're out of bed or we're at the table or in the office. Initially, when we started, we had to light a candle to say that, 'Okay, this is a space where we're connecting, we’re not talking about work.' We needed really hard boundaries at the top. And then it became a little bit more organic.”
The boundaries have been crucial to implement, especially because the couple began working together so naturally. When the pair first met, Skylar was NY-based a social strategist for BuzzFeed and was using content creation to drive business to her lingerie company. She was shooting her own content. Temi was working for Microsoft in D.C. He’d recently traded in his DJing equipment for a camera. “I've always loved taking pictures,” he says. “Even when I was a kid, my African mother would wake me up at 3:00 a.m. [during a] party, and be like, 'Come take the family picture.'”
Growing up, Temi says he watched his parents support each other and be the true definition of partners. He knew he wanted the same for his own relationship. But, the couple also wanted to make sure they were being financially responsible. The pair didn’t quit their traditional jobs until they’d saved up two years' worth of their cost of living. And, Temi received his Master of Business Administration from New York University with the knowledge that it could either help him advance in his corporate career or be applicable to his business with Skylar.
Temi and SkylarCj Hart @hartbreakToday, they say their working relationship is more of a “quiet dance.” They still implement some of the boundaries they learned in therapy, but they also lean into their natural strengths and deep love for one another. When we speak, Temi has planned a date for the couple to see Princess Mononoke in 4K IMAX and added it to their Notion so they can factor it into their busy schedules. “I fully plan to date for the rest of my life,” he says.
Skylar says the couple doesn’t just wait for date nights to check in with one another, though. This often happens in the mornings, after Temi has made her peppermint tea and poured himself a cup of coffee. When they ask each other how they slept, she says, it’s not just a “nicety.” It’s a genuine question meant to foster connection.
“A lot of it happens during the day in the midst of work. We'll stop and we'll hug. Or we’ll slow dance in the kitchen,” she says. “Sometimes it's hard to set a whole date night when you have 7,000 things going on. So, we must grasp these moments and check in when we can. And I think it's become so organic to us that I actually didn't even realize how often we do it. But all day long, we're like, 'Are you good? I felt like your energy shifted,' because we're best friends, we just know. We just feel it happen.”
What’s better than being in love? Building wealth while doing it. Watch Making Cents here for real stories of couples who make money moves together.
Featured image by Cj Hart @hartbreak