british actress Jameela Jamil could be satisfied starring in hit television shows, walking multiple red carpets and basking in the glow of celebrity, but she is not.
A rising star, thanks to her role in NBC’s The Good Place, alongside Ted Danson and Kristen Bell (the show airs on Netflix in Singapore), Jameela has also taken on a side job, that of an outspoken activist who wants the world to know that girls and women have more to offer than just their beauty.
Fed up with societal expectations, the Indian-Pakistani starlet started a movement called “I Weigh” in 2018 through an Instagram account, where she encourages women to post images of themselves and reveal how much they weigh – not in kilos – but in qualities they are proud of, such as being a good friend, a loving sister, a hard worker, and so on.
ACCIDENTAL ACTIVIST
“I hadn’t actually intended to start a movement. I just posted something in retaliation against pictures of famous women with their weight written across their bodies,” admits the 33-year-old.
“I feel like we’ve come too far as a gender to be measured in this way. So, I wrote down what I weigh, but I wrote it in achievements, and my metrics weren’t pounds and kilos. They were my financial independence, my activism, my relationships – everything that I survived.”
Her body positivity message that each of us is perfect the way we are, and that we need to stop body shaming one another, resonated with women across the world. The account now has more than a million followers who measure themselves by a totally different set of criterion.
Denne historien er fra March 2020-utgaven av The Singapore Women's Weekly.
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Denne historien er fra March 2020-utgaven av The Singapore Women's Weekly.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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