Femme Plus July 2017 | Page 32

#NoBodyButMine CAMPAIGN TO PROMOTE RACE, SIZE, AND AGE DIVERSITY IN FILM, MODELLING, AND FASHION SO THAT WOMEN ALL OVER THE WORLD CAN BE REPRESENTED! was a size 4. While that may have been the beginning of my negative self- image there would be many other factors throughout my life to help it along. Media images of the “perfect body”, magazines full of women that looked nothing like me, and movies like Nip Tuck helped to fuel the fires of insecurity. My twenties brought the diagnoses of an au- toimmune disease and a weight gain that took me from a size 4 to 14. Four years into my illness I realized that although there was no cure there was something that I could change, my mindset. I had to choose to accept myself, to love myself, to see myself as beautiful the way I was right at that mo- ment. As my con- fidence began to DESIREE JONES (FOUNDER) grow so did my consciousness of others women’s body issues. I started encouraging others on set when I would hear them say something negative about the way they looked or comparing themselves to other actress- es or models. That’s when I realized that is was the industry itself that was the issue. But who had created the industry? People. You and I. So if we created this issue, this mind- set of perfection, being a certain page 32