What you need to know about the ‘I Weigh’ movement

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You may have noticed the #iweigh hashtag popping up across the internet lately, or the @i_weigh Instagram account being used more and more. That’s because it’s the most recent internet movement to gain popularity.

NBC’s “The Good Place” star Jameela Jamil first created the @i_weigh account to encourage others to look beyond their weight on the scale and, instead, count up all of the other “measurements” in their life. For instance, instead of looking at how many pounds you weigh, look at the other important numbers in your life, such as your “three best friends” or your “one loving sister.” These are the things that really matter.

Then, once you add up all of those numbers, the value is placed on something far more important than your actual body size.

The account now has nearly 100,000 followers, and more and more people have been adding up their “total weight” online. Scrolling through the Instagram account, you’ll notice that all kinds of women — moms, athletes and even celebrities — have joined Jamil on her journey to diminish how often worth is attributed to body weight.

Emmy Rossum was the latest celebrity to get in on the movement. She posted to her Instagram account, asking fans, “Want to know what I weigh?”

https://www.instagram.com/p/BmOrWU9jfKS/?hl=en&taken-by=emmy

Fans were directed to watch her Instagram Stories from there. In her Stories, she added up her “weight.”

The @i_weigh account shared her posts on their account:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BmPU7Qcg_sd/?hl=en&taken-by=i_weigh

The actress added up things such as “100+ hours of television,” “one happy marriage,” “3 episodes of television directed” and “3 best friends since kindergarten.”

She also shared that she hopes people understand they are “so much more than a number.”

What Inspired The ‘I Weigh’ Movement

Jamil was first inspired to question the way society treats image when, after finding success as a radio show host in Britain, all that the tabloids focused on was her dress size.

“They didn’t even mention that I had gained 200,000 listeners. They just mentioned that I’d gained three dress sizes,” Jamil said on an episode of the Girlboss podcast. “I’d worked my ass off for five years and I was doing a job that literally had nothing to do with my aesthetic … my entire worth and value as a professional and as a human being was just reduced down to a number on a scale, down to the size of the brand, to the amount of inches around my waist.”

Jameela Jamil photo
Getty Images | Rich Fury

Body Shaming In The Media And Online

And Jamil’s certainly not alone in facing this kind of scrutiny. Plenty of celebrities have spoken out about the unrealistic body expectations for women that are portrayed online and in the media, including Tia Mowry, who recently opened up about loving her body at every stage, despite what the media might glorify in their pages.

“Some #pregnant women after giving birth no longer have a belly after 7 weeks. While others it may take a little longer. Me, I’m the latter. I remember after giving birth to Cree, my belly didn’t all of a sudden go flat. I did have a C-Section, (as well as with my second pregnancy) and I thought something was wrong with me. I had seen in magazines the many women on the beach a few weeks #postpartum in a two piece,” she wrote on Instagram.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BkZwUaClmRE/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=embed_loading_state_control

But she’s learning to love her body and accept it at every stage.

“To be honest, it had to take time for me to embrace my new body. With this second pregnancy, I now have embraced that fact that I’ve housed a human being,” she wrote. She ended with, “This.Is.Me. And I love me.”

Women like Jamil and Mowry certainly aren’t alone in their experiences. According to The Body Image Therapy Center, 89 percent of girls have dieted by age 17 and 70 percent of women between the ages of 18 and 30 claim to not like their bodies.

The Body Image Therapy Center

Clearly, this is an important issue to be discussed, and it’s great to see that women and celebrities are striving for ways to talk about “weight” in a way that promotes self-love and self-acceptance.

What do you think? Will you be joining the “I Weigh” movement?

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About the Author
Augusta Statz
I have a B.F.A. in Writing from the Savannah College of Art and Design. I’m an avid writer with a genuine sense of curiosity. I feel the best way to absorb the world around you is through fashion, art and food, so that’s what I spend most of my time writing about.

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