What Not To Wear

We are always told what not to wear.

Bikinis. Short Sleeves. Stripes. Florals. Bright colors are certainly out of the question for a lot of us.

There are tons of articles and listicles of what women over 40 shouldn’t wear or what someone with a big stomach should avoid. We are a society of trying to hide, conceal, and alter what we don’t like. We are becoming less and less human and more plastic by the second with the influx of doggie filters and smoothing apps to make us Instagram acceptable.

We are afraid to try anything new out of fear of what others will think of our bodies. We fear the backlash of someone noticing that we aren’t wearing a body-shaper or that good ole’ girdle. The stretch marks on our arms or the sag of our boobs. Our real bodies are unacceptable.

We’re so worried about fitting in that we toss away all of the uniqueness that makes us so much more interesting. This may be cliché, but if we all looked like a Barbie wouldn’t the world be such a boring place?

I have a lot of conversations with my platform about body image. And, the stories that I hear are heartbreaking and shocking. Self-hate for many of us stems from childhood abuse by parents, bullying at school, and the media.

Can you imagine what would happen if we just loved ourselves without stipulations? Like if you loved yourself prior to losing ten pounds? Or if you loved yourself before the nose job? Before the makeup?

That’s why it’s so important to have conversations. Like, honest conversations about our bodies. No matter how weird or embarrassing. We learn so much more about ourselves when we share our stories, our struggles, and triumphant moments.

It’s kinda funny that as a plus-size model and body-positive activist, I still have my days. I still have that little voice in the back of my head that says, hmmm you shouldn’t wear that. You can’t wear that. YOU DON’T HAVE THE BODY FOR IT.

Fashion Nova Curve sent me this mustard jumper type deal and I was like oh that super cute n whateva. I kinda thought the material would be unforgiving, but I was feeling confident. I can do this!

When it arrived, I tried it on with excitement. I immediately noticed that it literally showed every dip and dimple of my thighs. My thighs and legs have always been problematic and it’s taken me a long time to come to terms with them. They always seem to garner attention that I don’t care for, making me feel like some kind of object. And, they are riddled with fat and cellulite. 

I looked in the mirror. This would look much better with a pair of Spanx, I thought. They’d smooth out the cellulite. Smooth out my stomach and fupa. It’d make everything look good.

I love my body and learning to love it more each day, but I have my days where I get sucked into the ideal of imitating unrealistic beauty standards. Then I start ridiculing myself and blaming what I ate yesterday on my ‘today’ fatness. If only I ate less and exercised more then I wouldn’t have to wear Spanx. If only I could lose a few pounds I’d be able to wear this or that with confidence. The age-old question: why not be confident right now, in the body I already got? 

When does only losing a few pounds ever satisfy us? We then get caught up in the idea that thin automatically means happy and spiral into diet culture. And as ya’ll know, it’s hard to recoup and bounce back from eating disorders and the negative effects of unhealthy dieting.

I almost didn’t post a lot of these photos because my cellulite is screaming hello! Because we don’t ever see cellulite on models or on magazines. Cellulite isn’t normal. But, every human being has stretch marks and cellulite to some extent. But, you’d never know because everyone smooths and edits now. 

I’ve gotten so many compliments on this jumper without the Spanx. With the cellulite full view. And I felt good in it. And, because I feel good, that’s the only thing that matters.

My cellulite or stretch marks don’t define me. And neither should it for you. 

There’s no such thing as what not to wear. Don’t ever listen to those anti-body love articles that box you into only wearing things that tuck and flatter. Just put it on and see how you feel. Let your body and mind guide you to what you wear.

Did you ever grow up wanting to change a part of your body? Have you come to terms with that part or are you still struggling? Let’s chat. 

Xoxo,

Leah V

Reclaiming Time and Taking Up Space

This week has been very interesting. Well, this entire year has been interesting to say the least. I’ve learned much about setting boundaries, cutting off dead-weight friends and family who are clueless to that fact, not accountable for their actions, and high-key jealous. I’ve learned about drive, about pushing one’s self to the outer limits, where few people go. Fear of success and fear of loneliness. I’ve especially learned the two biggest lessons of them all: reclaiming my time and taking up space.

Last year, I remember asking myself, how can I top last year? How can I make my photoshoots better? My wardrobe fiercer? My voice louder? How can I be more authentic, raw, helpful? Although, I thought I was woke, I was only semi-woke because I hadn’t thought outside the box. Many of us think that we’re thinking so big, but are we really? Whatever you think could happen, could go so much farther, bigger. And, I hadn’t known this until I got to work with Adidas Originals and was flown to Canada by the University of Ottawa. All expenses paid.

Jacket Courtesy of Addition Elle

I want to talk about reclaiming time (thanks Auntie Maxine!). Now, we all know that you can’t actually reclaim time. When time is up, it’s gone, and you can never, ever get it back. With this fact, why the fuck do people waste so much of it? And, why do folks allow others to waste theirs? We have women who stay with men who verbally abuse them, treat them like shit on a stick, and they stay. Wasting good, vital years on a human who doesn’t even value their time. We have people who allow their family to belittle them, offer surface conversation, hurt feelings, and steal more of their time. Same thing with a dead-end job, how much time are they claiming from you?

Unfortunately, we can’t maximize every moment of every second of the day, and we will have to, at some point, engage in time wasted, but it’s up to you as to how much of your time you waste.

“I’ve wasted almost a decade,” I complained to my sister when I got divorced. “Do you know what I could’ve done with all that time?”

She replied, “You didn’t waste any time. You learned a lesson.”

“What did I learn?” I whined.

“Well, you learned what you don’t want in life.”

And, she was right. I did learn a great deal about what I wanted, what I needed, and what I hadn’t wanted ever again.

Do you ever meet up with someone or go to an event, and wondered why you even wasted your time going? Stop doing that. Reclaim your time. Stop doing things that you feel are going to make other people happy. Stop indulging in activities that you don’t want to do. Stop being friends with that girl that you really don’t mesh with anymore or that dude you feel inclined to be with just because. You are not doing yourself a favor. You are merely passing time, wasting time that could be spent on developing you.

I, honestly, feel bad for people like that. People who only have connections just to say they do or only going because ABC, but have no real interest in it. They aren’t really living life. Life is living them.

I used to be that person. Outwardly, I’d have a hard smile plastered on my face, but inside I was bored, dead, unenthusiastic. Why was I trying to be someone that I wasn’t? Why was I wasting time on relationships that clearly weren’t going to develop into anything but surface shit?

After being hurt by individuals who I tried to please for many, many years, I made a pact with myself. I was going to reclaim my time and only speak to people I was interested in, who I vibed with and do things that I liked to do. No more pretending to fit into this group or be cool with that group. Fuck that! In addition to my ‘fuck that’ moment, I was going to allow myself to take up space. Which meant that I was going to shine at my brightest watt without a care as to who was blinded by it.

For most of my circle, they accepted the Leah V who was changing, being more comfortable in her skin. For others, they started to hold resentment and dropped off like flies, which is fine, because that frees up space for better people to occupy. And, it has.

Sometimes, I get weirded out by all the folks that support me. It takes time getting used to. I’m a traumatized Black girl from Detroit with a trash family and a messy divorce that gets me mad from time to time, so when someone reaches out and is like ‘I got you’, it never ceases to amaze me.    

Give yourself the time and ability to reclaim your time and take up space.

xoxo,

Leah V

Stop Calling Women Selfish Because They Choose Birth Control

It really kills me how Muslims can be so judgmental. And, I’m not saying that ‘other’ people aren’t. Trust me they are, but because I’m very much so Muslim, we’re going to speak about that demographic right now.

Do you know how I know that the ‘haram police’ is so judgy? I used to be on the payroll. I was the girl who still maintained her virginity past the age of 13, never took off my hijab, never dated, smoked weed. Ha! Heck no. Weed was wack. And, if you smoked it you clearly were destined to dwell within the fiery pits of hell.

We grew up in a family where my mother only fed us halal meats, read the holy book to us when we woke up and right before we went to sleep (yup, the devil had to be creeping somewhere in the closet), and we weren’t allowed to watch anything over a PG-13 rating and even that was pushing it. We had to close our eyes if there were kissing scenes, and she’d fast forward any music with curse words in it. A man dressed in women’s clothing on TV? She’d turn it off completely. Magazines with Britney Spears in short-shorts, a no-no. She bought us magazines like National Geographic instead, stating it was more ‘educational’.

When I turned 19, I moved out. Her world had become overbearing and controlling.

Society had quickly let me know that the world was not as it was back at home and that judgmental shit had to be tossed immediately.

Although, I was out of Mom’s house, I still hung around a lot of Muslims and their parents. Their parents were judgmental in the wrong kinds of ways. Most of the parents were hypercritical when it came to other people’s kids and their daughters. If they had a son, they could basically be spotted in a strip club making it rain on someone’s ass and it’d be given 99 excuses plus one. But, let it be a daughter and she’s damned to hell forever.

Of course, this trickled down to the Muslim children. They ranged from middle-grade judgy to Muslim parent judgy.  

Shortly after moving on my own, I went to the doctor and requested birth control. I knew for a fact that I didn’t want to have a trillion kids like a lot of the Muslim women had in the community. Most of those women hadn’t held a job, was overly-dependent on their cheating ass husbands to pay the bills, hadn’t had anything past a high-school diploma (if that), they weren’t traveling to faraway lands or experiencing the wonders of life. A lot of them became career mothers, usually pregnant every other year.

Cheers to people who loooooooove having buckets of kids…that just wasn’t me.   

My friends are I were chatting on the couch and pregnancy came up. Someone had gotten pregnant. Again.  

“I’m 99.9 percent sure that I’m covered,” I joked.

“What do you mean?” Someone asked.

“Well, I’m on birth control now.”

By the facial expressions, you’d think I just tossed a cat out the window.

I got everything from ‘that’s not permissible in Islam’, ‘That’s unnatural’, ‘You won’t ever be able to have a child’, and ‘that’s what women are made for’.

I sat there and took the verbal abuse because that’s exactly what it was. Why was I selfish because I wanted to take control of my body? I mean, God gave me MY body. Not them or not my husband at the time. Why were they so adamant on policing my reproductive system in the name of Islam?

Years passed and I was still regularly on birth control. I’d get asked, “Why don’t you have any kids yet?”

My usual responses: because I don’t want to be a mom or I have no money or I’m pursing an education.

None of which were the correct answers for men and women alike. Every time the topic came up, I’d get shunned, told that it wasn’t Islamic, that I was poisoning my body. I’d go to my gynecologist in fear of infertility. And every time, she’d assure me that I’d be fine.

There was one time in particular this older Muslim lady asked my husband (ex) why we hadn’t had kids. He said something clever as to not expose me.

“Because I’m on birth control and when God wants us to have one, we’ll have one,” I said loudly. "Maybe I'll have a Jesus baby..."

She cut her eyes at me and pulled him away. I was shocked when I heard her telling him that she could help find him a wife that’d give him a child…

The last straw was when a friend told me that I was selfish for being on birth control because lots of women are infertile.

“Those pills are poison,” she huffed.

At that point, I’d had it. “So, the prescribed painkillers that you asked me for yesterday aren’t poison?”

Vicodin is okay but birth control is not… Things that make you go hmmm.

Over the years, I’ve gotten shit from both sides for my responsible decision to protect my body from multiple foreign invaders. Babies. I can barely afford rent or my car note. Ugh? How much does a kid cost again? *Counts loose change*

The very people that sit around shaming women for utilizing birth control are men who have multiple kids that they barely take care of, women who have used abortion as their form of birth control instead of just getting on actual birth control, and closed-minded individuals who like to hear themselves talk. Everybody wants to be a Google Gynecologist instead of focusing on themselves.

You are not selfish for wanting to be on birth control. Or not to be on it. You are not less than another Muslim. It’s your body, your choice.   

And, I really believe that this is a topic that should be more openly discussed in the Muslim community and not just shunned and told not to do. And, no I don’t mean a panel of Muslim men ‘man-splaining’ it, but women talking to other women and discussing the choices that Muslim women and girls have the right to have and make.

I can’t sit here and tell you that it’s permissible in Islam. But, Muslims like to pick and choose what they go against. They like to pick and choose what sin is worse than another. Which sin is more ‘acceptable’. That’s not how this works.

As a Muslim, my goal is to please Allah (swt) not man.

So, I’m sorry but not really sorry. I’m a firm believer in birth control as well as my right to make that decision, and I’ll stay on it until I feel the time is right to have (or not have) children.

XOXO,

Leah V