WHAT WE'RE ABOUT
We are constantly redefining our own perspectives, and therefore tend to write a lot about our personal experiences. Many followers and contributors are living with anorexia, bulimia, body dysmorphic disorder, depression, and a variety of other body image disorders or mental illnesses, so please be respectful and remember that health applies differently to everyone. Any and all potentially triggering content will be prefaced with a trigger warning.
RBI supports all races, genders, classes, and sizes. We try our best to make this a safe space for everyone. If we are not doing our job or checking our privilege, we invite you to please inform us.
Some of the artwork you see here has been created by our founder or moderators, some sourced when applicable. Please be kind enough to source this blog whenever you share it's content.
We are not health professionals. Any and all advice provided on this blog is supported only by our own research, studies, and personal experiences; nothing more.
This blog is part of the Safe Space Network.
PRACTICE MAKES
PERFECTBREATHING EASYSo my super dope homechick Ray sent me this amazing video. This fierce big boy is giving me EVERYTHING. Attitude, Confidence and Endurance.
These three things are SOOO important and often times as bigger dancers we are the ones who struggle with endurance. I’ll be the first one to tell you I struggle with faster dances. It’s hard for me to keep up and still dance with energy….which then often leads to lack of confidence. I used to get so frustrated with myself and often times get upset.
I’ve learned the best thing to do is practice, like full out, let it out, scream and shout practice.
As a big dancer you may have to practice more than others not because you don’t have the choreo down, rather to build your stamina. I cannot tell you how many times in college I almost felt like I was passing out after a dance because I was so out of breathe. I’ve learned that practicing FULL OUT a couple times a week really helps these days. My endurance is high and my endorphins are up, it’s a great feeling!! So keep pushing big dancers, we’ve already proved we can be hot, let’s show the world how we can move!!!!
You better werk!!!! <333!!
GET IT!!!
I can’t even walk in heels, much less dance. GET IT BABE
You better DO. IT.
I’m confident this guy is a jackass.
I need to stop being so stunned by people who utterly refuse to accept others are happy with their bodies, because they themselves fundamentally are not and may have never ever experienced that feeling.
It can be a stunning sound of hurt and confusion, that I myself am thrown off and second guess my ‘comfort level’. I think some of us (TeamTumblrBabeForce) have made that fundamental decision to turn our backs on that quiet violence of ‘hating’ our bodies, for a view of accepting that we wont feel ‘Beyonce’ everyday, but will sit back and know it alone in peace.
“Fatty self-love: if I don’t personally know it, understand it, or experience it - it can’t possibly exist.”
Sometimes I am a toad, and sometimes I am a tiger.
So many people ask me how they can improve their self-esteem.
Sometimes I don’t know what to tell them.
I want to tell you, anyone who has asked me, you, that it’s not a mountain you climb. It’s not a platform you reach. It’s not a tree you’re scaling, a river you’re crossing, or a boulder you’re pushing. It’s none of these things and all of them. It would be a lie to say that self-esteem is any journey with an end or any obstacle with a summit. It’s something you carry around with you — or rather, it’s something I carry around with me. Sometimes it is a balloon so high and bright it lifts my heart with it, and sometimes it is a stone so dank and heavy I can barely leave my house.
It’s a process. It’s something I fail at all the time, and something I succeed at all the time, and something that is not the same for any two people. For me it is the memory of avoiding looking at our touching my body underneath the conscious decision to look at and touch my body all the time, to walk around in my underwear among people or alone, defiant, chin up and spine straight. For me it is consciously looking in the mirror, meeting my own eyes, finding three things I like about myself that day and remembering all the days I couldn’t do that — and feeling today, another day that I can, as a triumph for myself.
It’s knowing that my body is my own and my relationship with it is the only one that matters. It’s never being able to forget that for most of my life I treated my body as a sack of meat that shunted my brain through the mud, something that was to be ignored, something that was shameful — it is knowing that peeling this outer layer of grime away from myself as often leaves me raw and vulnerable as it does clean and fresh and new. You find a way to use a scar as armor, for it’s thicker and doesn’t feel as much, isn’t as sensitive; you find a way to gentle yourself, think of yourself in sweeter terms, find pride in the stretch marks that make you feel like a tigress prowling through the night, as dangerous and beautiful and rare. You find a way.
Sometimes the way is hard — sometimes you are feeling raw and vulnerable and you are at once numb and too exposed, and there are stones to step on in bare feet and branches to lash at the face you can’t look at.
And sometimes the way is beautiful. Sometimes I am overwhelmed at how beautiful. Sometimes it’s the sunlight against your skin, your own reverent hand purring over your thigh, your fingers a tangle in your hair. Sometimes you skip, and you are weightless, and you are strong. More and more often, the way does not seem as hard.
We walk it together, I want you to know that. We never walk it alone. You find someone to walk beside you, and when you need to be helped, you reach out and we clasp hands.
Why yes someone did make me mad today.
Don’t fetishize my body type. Don’t dictate how I should feel about myself and how I should present myself to society in order to be deemed fuckable.
snaps
I am womyn, I am strong.
I started thinking about all the [self] growth and how I am embracing changes and new [positive and healing] attitudes in my life.
Not only am I savvier, I am also more confident in who I am and who I am becoming.
I am womyn, I am strong.
I cry, a lot, all the time as a matter of fact—it cleanses my soul.
I am emotions: happiness, frustration, titillation, rejection…
I am all torned and feeling disgruntled but choosing happiness because I am hoping and wishing for the best— to be at peace.
I look at myself and find beauty and stories in the marks and scars of my body; stretch marks, surgeries, pain marks, pleasure scars…
My body is my temple, my body is the only body i’ll ever have…I love it, queer, brown, disabled, and FAT.
I am wombyn, I am strong.
I cry, a lot, all the time as a matter of fact—it cleanses my soul.
Because my soul is guided by the moon and the moon knows of my emotions, la luna—ella me entiende, ella lo ve todo. She reminds me to care more, to give more, to want to be more because
I am Femininity Divine. I am a blessing manifest guided by the moon… I adore her, as I know she adores me.
I am womyn, I am strong. I am beautiful.
1. Don’t compare yourself to others. You are totally unique, and have different talents, abilities and strengths.
2. Never criticise or put yourself down. There are plenty of others who will do that for you. You need to be your biggest, and you greatest,…
It’s amazing what a cute outfit can do to my otherwise cloudy disposition. I have been in and out of a depressive rut, scrambling up and falling back in a pit of self-loathing for weeks. I’m making a concerted effort to keep myself up for a little while. The sun is shining, it’s warm and beautiful outside – I am thankful for my body, my life, and the love that exists within it.
At least, I looked cute today.
so this picture has been making the rounds on some thinspo & other fat-hating/generally hateful blogs. With the exception of the person who announced that I am her thinspo, none of these blogs have made any comments. There just seems to be this tacit agreement that my face in and of itself is deserving of ridicule, that anyone seeing it should automatically want to laugh.
So I’ve been watching silently as it is reblogged over and over, feeling a mix of annoyance and confusion. The funny thing is that the one thing I have not felt during this time is ugly. I keep coming back to the picture trying to understand what there is to mock about it and each time I find nothing. Each time I look, I feel exactly the way I felt when I first posted it, cute. That is a victory for me because in the not too distant past, I would have been devastated by this.
It’s intense… the idea that 50 or so strangers would so thoroughly agree that my face is laughable that they feel no need to comment. In the past, I would have thought “who am I to disagree?” but all I can think now is… Why would I let their opinion have so much power over me?
You can call me ugly if you want to. Just don’t expect me to agree with you.
This whole thing just confirms the truth of this quote…
“Fat people who love themselves scare the shit out of people who don’t love themselves. Even fat people who are TRYING to love themselves scare the shit out of people who can’t do the same. We force people to have to look at why they hate their bodies because we are “supposed” to hate ours and we don’t. And sometimes they have no idea what to do with that, so they act like assholes.” - Tigress Osborn
Beautiful.
Our skin covers our body and inevitably contributes to how we feel about ourselves, and whether or not we choose to dwell on the fact that it may be scrutinized by others.
It’s a topic I haven’t touched upon yet in this blog, but as I’ve been encountering some personal issues with my skin that are making me feel more negative about myself than I have in a long time, I thought it might be worth it to put out some words. See what happens.
I have had sensitive skin from the moment I was born. Always conscious of special soaps, detergent, moisturizers, fragrance free, hypoallergenic, all natural, sulfate free…It’s a constant game of waiting to see how my skin reacts to absolutely anything.
Acne took over my face by the time I was 11. Large, sore, cystic acne spread all over my face, neck, arms, chest and back. I was used as a guinea pig, bounced around from dermatologist to allergist to specialist to whothefuckever. I decided to stop.
I eventually grew out of my particular phase of teenage acne, just as the dermatologists always said I would. I felt liberated. My skin was clear for a small patch of time, but it was still sensitive.
I discovered that whenever I went out in the sun for an extended period of time without sunblock, my skin would break out in a rash. Naturally, I stopped lying out in the sun.
Then I started developing hives.
At first it seemed they only cropped up when I was cold, or exposed to the cold for extended periods of time. Then it became more and more frequent.
An allergist assessed my situation and declared “You have chronic urticaria (hives), congratulations! Take antihistamines when they flare up. That’s all you can do.”
Gee, thanks.
In the mean time, my scalp condition went from mildly annoying dandruff to something indescribable. It spread to my face, mostly my eyebrows and nose. Everything flaking, red and raw. I noticed it was mostly provoked by hot water or extreme heat.
I started taking cold showers. I started using 100% free trade organic all natural soaps. My skin problems began to fade.
My hives didn’t flare up too often and when they did it was only on my hands, arms and feet.
I later saw a psychologist about my anxiety disorder and started taking medication for it. After a month or two I realized every time I took an ibuprofen, aspirin or tylenol my face, neck, chest, arms and legs would swell into a itchy red mass of welts.
Some days they are there anyway. Today I woke up with them on my arms, hands and feet. I scratch myself in my sleep until I bleed and scab. When they’re on my face I feel like a monster. When they attack my lips and tongue, I feel like I’m going to choke. When it’s especially bad, they coat every inch of me - Including my scalp.
It’s painful and humiliating.
I am going to be graduating soon. I don’t want to be covered in hives when they take a photo of me holding my diploma. I don’t want to be immortalized as the sad girl covered in red welts.
It’s hard enough to be confident in your skin when it’s housing a body that fights the norm. But when your skin itself is letting you down, it is doubly tiring.
Anyone else who has suffered from chronic skin conditions or issues in general, feel free to submit a ranty rant. It feels nice to know you’re not alone.