This, my friends, is Jameela Jamil. She is a huge source of inspiration for me, and in my humble opinion, she might just be the coolest, funniest, most down-to-earth feminist queen of our generation. You may recognize her from her role as Tahani on the popular Netflix series The Good Place, but hopefully after reading this article you’ll think of her as much more than just an actress actress on some TV show.
Anyone who glances at a single photo of Jameela can see that she is slim, young, and beautiful; which is why some may be surprised to find out that she runs her own body positivity campaign, has a huge media platform which she uses for body positivity activism, and has faced quite a few hurdles of her own when it comes to self-love and self-acceptance.
Jameela was born in London to an Indian father and Pakistani mother in 1986. She As a teenager, she suffered from anorexia and did not eat a full meal between the ages of 14 and 17. In interviews, Jameela has reflected back on those years saying, “There were never any women who were celebrated for their intellect … and all of my magazines were selling me weight loss products or telling me to be thin.” When Jameela was seventeen, her back was severely damaged due to a car accident. This life-altering event was a wake up call that taught her how to respect her body in a way that she never had before.
Throughout her twenties, Jameela made major strides in her career as a TV host, but the only aspect of her life that the media paid attention to was her fluctuating weight. Even though she was speaking out against body shaming during that time, no one took her words seriously. In interviews she has touched on why this is saying that, “When fat people or oppressed people speak out, we don’t listen to them because we blame them, we victim-shame them, and we say that they’re bitter. They are responsible for their own otherization, because they’ve chosen to eat too much or to live a certain way.” It’s really disheartening knowing that she has been speaking out against body shaming for so long, but we are only now taking her ideas seriously, now that she is thin.
Jameela was twenty-nine years old when she landed her role on The Good Place, which ultimately gave her the proper platform that she needed for her ideas to finally be recognized by a large audience. She used that platform to launch an Instagram account called I Weigh. During an interview, Jameela spoke about the account saying, “I think I’ve created a safe space on social media which wasn’t easy to do. But it’s this really beautiful place that people can come to, and so many people do.” The account is all about radical inclusivity, and currently has over 800 thousand followers on Instagram.
I love that there are celebrities out there like Jameela who are using their social media platforms to break down long-standing ideas about what it means to be beautiful. She has done such as amazing job making body stuff that most people are embarrassed to talk about, stuff like double chins and back fat, light-hearted and normal. The way I see it is, if someone as beautiful as Jameela can laugh at her double chin, then I can laugh at mine too.
My current favorite Jameela quote is, “I’m trying to get to a place where I don’t think about my size. I’m trying to replace my thoughts about calories, carbs, size, and cellulite with money, orgasm, laughter and good experiences. I’m training my brain to unlearn thinking about my body at all.” I absolutely love what Jameela is saying here. Women are conditioned to place a tremendous amount of value in their bodies, when there are so many other more meaningful things in life to place value in. I am so thankful for the work that Jameela has done to intentionally celebrate the parts of women’s lives that women actually want celebrated. It’s about time there is a shift in the way we think about women’s bodies, or better yet, we could just not think about women’s bodies at all!