For as long as I can remember, I believed that my body had to shrink to be worthy. That love, acceptance and even spiritual integrity, ultimately depended on how I looked.
I grew up in a single-parent home where women’s bodies were often blamed for broken marriages. I heard again and again that if a woman “let herself go,” she became less desirable, and it was only a matter of time before a man looked elsewhere. Of course, it was her fault for not being attractive. Nobody cared that she was overworked and overwhelmed. Mental health was an excuse and as a child who wanted to get married it seemed that the key to a long lasting marriage depended on my size.
As if that wasn’t enough, purity culture layered on another set of expectations: remain modest. Stay pure. Don’t be a “stumbling block” for the men around you. It didn’t matter if I was just existing in my body, my shape was a threat.
So I learned to hide. I wore clothes that were way too loose. I never wanted to be noticed. I believed that being invisible meant I was doing things right. That if I stayed small, I would be safe and, most importantly, loved.
But the truth? I was internalizing shame.
And I carried it into adulthood. Into motherhood. Into marriage.
After I had children and couldn’t lose the weight postpartum, I felt like I had failed. Not just myself but some unspoken rule that said my husband’s love would only remain if I stayed desirable. If I bounced back.
I didn’t even realize how deeply I had absorbed those lies until I told him. Until I admitted that my pursuit of weight loss wasn’t just about health, it was about fear. I was terrified that I would be deemed unattractive. That he would leave and I would be another wife who let herself go.
That conversation changed everything.
And while I’m still on a journey toward healing, I now understand that my worth was never tied to a number. My beauty isn’t dependent on my size. And love, real love, has nothing to do with how closely I resemble a beauty standard from the early 2000s.
Which is why I’m so proud to join Dove’s #UnseenBeauty campaign.
To mark the 25th anniversary of Y2K, Dove is inviting Millennial women to rebuild from the harmful messages that shaped us. Their new study, The Weight of Words, reveals that 3 in 4 Millennial women in Canada still carry the weight of toxic beauty standards from that era.
Terms like “muffin top,” “bikini body,” “love handles,” and “size zero” aren’t just phrases—they were weapons. Words that made us question our value. Words that made many of us disappear into shame.
But we’re done shrinking.
I’m learning to love my body, not in spite of its size, but at this size. I’m learning to care for it from a place of love, not punishment. I’m learning to see beauty, not the version the media sold us, but the kind that comes from being fully seen and still fully loved.
If you’ve ever felt like your body was a problem to fix, please hear me: you are not too much. You are not a burden. And you are not alone.
Your body is not the enemy. You are worthy of love, joy, confidence, and care, exactly as you are today.
Together, we can rebuild what it means to be beautiful. We can rewrite the narrative. We can make space for every shape, size, stretch mark, and story.
This is #UnseenBeauty. This is healing.
#TheWeightOfWords #PurityCultureRecovery #PostpartumBodyLove #MillennialHealing #RealBodiesAreBeautiful
Sandy Esprit 
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