Every Body celebrates inclusivity and the representation of human beings in every shape and form.
It starts off just like any other makeup tutorial would: Beauty blogger Nabela Noor stares into the camera, makeup-free, and begins to prime her skin. At this point, nothing seems out of the ordinary. But in the blink of an eye, she starts to write startling words in a darker foundation shade on her skin.
“Pig.”
“Ugly.”
“Fat.”
For anyone who has endured any kind of bullying in real life or online, these words can have deep scars. After dealing with a year of cyberbullying, Noor decided it was time to take those words back and celebrate herself. Noor posted the video on December 31; in the meantime, it’s amassed well over 1 million views.
Unfortunately, cyberbullying on social media is nothing new. The experience of being body shamed, in particular, led the proudly Bangladeshi-American vlogger to start a dialogue with her fans and followers that aimed to combat hate in all in forms while defying narrow Western beauty ideals.
“From inclusivity for people of color, the plus-size community, and the Muslim community, I try my best to use my platform to speak up for these communities and urge their inclusion and representation,” Noor tells us.
The popular video sees Noor blend away the weaponized words, and replaces them with her own. In the video caption, Noor writes: “No one can tell us who we are. We are glorious. We are beautiful. We are worthy. This video is a small victory in my self-love revolution & I can’t wait to continue the fight in 2018.”
Noor tells us that since posting the video, she has received thousands of messages from people across the gender spectrum about its positive impact on their own body image issues. (As of press time, the post has received over 32,000 comments.)
“So many people felt liberated through my video, which is so wild to me,” she says “But I felt absolutely liberated making it, and it’s been amazing to help free others from the words and doubts that control them just by creating content I believe in.”
Noor hopes that more content creators like herself will start to put diversity and inclusion at the heart of what they create.
“Through the content I create and the conversations I engage in on and offline, I try my best to advocate for women of color and plus-size women and men,” Noor says.
She believes it’s important to speak up about her own experiences online and wants women to understand that beauty can come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. She also offers the following advice for dealing with haters: “Keep on keeping on and keep shining — it is the best thing you can do when people wish ill upon you.”
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