Body Positivity (noun):
The fact of feeling
good about your body and the way it looks.
Since the beginning of time, women have been told that their bodies
have to look a certain way. I am not minimizing that men have had to endure
society’s expectations and standards but for women, it has been emphasized more
through media, advertisements, the beauty and skincare industry, and more. But here’s the
thing - that ideal is always changing.
During the 90s, the “ideal beauty standard” was being tall,
fair-skinned, and thin - to the point of bones protruding from your skin.
Today, the ideal is for women to be “healthy” skinny which means being curvy
and well-endowed but also maintaining a flat stomach. Am I the only one who
thinks either of these are impossible to achieve and maintain ?
Whether you are short or tall, plus size or midsize, blonde or brunette,
you are the best and most beautiful
version of yourself!
To celebrate the body positivity movement, I have compiled a list of
titles with characters who struggle with but inevitably radiate with body
positivity!
A.K. Pittman
It’s 1984 and after moving to Northenfield, Texas, with her family, Elyse Nebbit faces the challenge of finding her place in a new school, one dominated by social status and Friday night football. When Elyse’s effortlessly beautiful older sister Jayne starts dating golden boy Charlie Bingley, Elyse finds herself curious about Charlie’s popular and brooding best friend, Billy Fitz. Elyse’s body insecurities eventually complicate her relationship with Billy, leaving Jayne and Elyse’s exceedingly blunt friend, Lottie, to step in and help Elyse accept herself for who she is, pant size and all.
Crystal Maldonado
Charlie Vega is a lot of things. Smart. Funny. Artistic. Ambitious. Fat.
Becky Albertalli
When it comes to drumming, Leah Burke is usually on beat - but real life isn’t always so rhythmic.
She’s an anomaly in her friend group: the only child of a young, single mom, and her life is decidedly less privileged. She loves to draw but is too self-conscious to show it. And even though her mom knows she’s bisexual, she hasn’t mustered the courage to tell her friends - not even her openly gay BFF, Simon.
So Leah really doesn’t know what to do when her rock-solid friend group starts to fracture in unexpected ways. With prom and college on the horizon, tensions are running high.
It’s hard for Leah to strike the right note while the people she loves are fighting - especially when she realizes she might love one of them more than she ever intended.
The
Upside of Unrequited
Becky Albertalli
Seventeen-year-old Molly Peskin-Suso knows all about unrequited love. No matter how many times her twin sister, Cassie, tells her to woman up, Molly can’t stomach the idea of rejection. So she’s careful. Fat girls always have to be careful.
Then a cute new girl enters Cassie’s orbit, and for the first time ever, Molly’s cynical twin is a lovesick mess. Meanwhile, Molly's totally not dying of loneliness - except for the part where she is. Luckily, Cassie's new girlfriend comes with a cute hipster-boy sidekick. If Molly can win him over, she'll get her first kiss and she'll get her twin back.
There's only one problem: Molly's coworker, Reid. He's a chubby Tolkien superfan with a season pass to the Ren Faire, and there's absolutely no way Molly could fall for him. Right?
Julie
Murphy
Self-proclaimed fat girl Willowdean Dickson (dubbed “Dumplin’" by her former beauty queen mom) has always been at home in her own skin. Her thoughts on having the ultimate bikini body? Put a bikini on your body.
With her all-American beauty best friend, Ellen, by her side, things have always worked . . . until Will takes a job at Harpy’s, the local fast-food joint. There she meets Private School Bo, a hot former jock. Will isn’t surprised to find herself attracted to Bo. But she is surprised when he seems to like her back.
Instead of finding new heights of self-assurance in her relationship with Bo, Will starts to doubt herself. So she sets out to take back her confidence by doing the most horrifying thing she can imagine: entering the Miss Clover City beauty pageant - along with several other unlikely candidates—to show the world that she deserves to be up there as much as any girl does.
Along the way, she’ll shock the hell out of Clover City - and maybe herself most of all.
Puddin’
Julie
Murphy
Millie Michalchuk has gone to fat camp every year since she was a little girl. Not this year. This year she has new plans to chase her secret dream of being a newscaster - and to kiss the boy she’s crushing on.
Callie Reyes is the pretty girl who is next in line for dance team captain and has the popular boyfriend. But when it comes to other girls, she’s more frenemy than friend.
When circumstances bring the girls together over the course of a semester, they surprise everyone (especially themselves) by realizing that they might have more in common than they ever imagined.
A story about unexpected friendship, romance, and Texas-size girl power, this is another winner from Julie Murphy.
Kody
Keplinger
Seventeen-year-old Bianca Piper may not be the prettiest
girl in her high school, but she has a loyal group of friends, a biting wit,
and a spot-on BS detector. She's also way too smart to fall for the charms of
man-slut and slimy school hottie Wesley Rush, who calls Bianca the Duff--the
Designated Ugly Fat Friend--of her crew.
But things aren't so great at home and Bianca, desperate
for a distraction, ends up kissing Wesley. Worse, she likes it. Eager for
escape, Bianca throws herself into a closeted enemies-with-benefits
relationship with him.
Until it all goes horribly awry. It turns out Wesley isn't
such a bad listener, and his life is pretty screwed up, too. Suddenly Bianca
realizes with absolute horror that she's falling for the guy she thought she
hated more than anyone.
The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things
Carolyn Mackler
Fifteen-year-old Virginia feels like a plus-sized black sheep in her family, especially next to her perfect big brother Byron. Not to mention her best friend has moved, leaving Virginia to navigate an awkward relationship with a boy alone. He might like her now but she has her doubts about how he'll react if he ever looks under all her layers of clothes.
In order to survive, Virginia decides to follow a “Fat Girl Code
of Conduct,” which works, until the unthinkable causes her family's façade to
crumble. As her world spins out of orbit, she realizes that being true to
herself might be the only way back.
Told in a perfect blend of humor and heart, this acclaimed Printz Honor winner resonates as much today as it did when it first published, and now features a new author foreword, text updates, and other bonus content.
Lyla Lee
Skye Shin has heard it all. Fat girls shouldn’t dance. Wear bright colors. Shouldn’t call attention to themselves. But Skye dreams of joining the glittering world of K-Pop, and to do that, she’s about to break all the rules that society, the media, and even her own mother, have set for girls like her.
She’ll challenge thousands of other performers in an internationally televised competition looking for the next K-pop star, and she’ll do it better than anyone else.
When Skye nails her audition, she’s immediately swept into a whirlwind of countless practices, shocking performances, and the drama that comes with reality TV. What she doesn’t count on are the highly fat-phobic beauty standards of the Korean pop entertainment industry, her sudden media fame and scrutiny, or the sparks that soon fly with her fellow competitor, Henry Cho.
But Skye has her sights on becoming the world’s first plus-sized K-pop star, and that means winning the competition - without losing herself.
Lisa
Fipps
Ellie is tired of being fat-shamed and does something about it in this poignant debut novel-in-verse.
Julie Murphy
Faith Herbert is a pretty regular teen. When she’s not hanging out with her two best friends, Matt and Ches, she’s volunteering at the local animal shelter or obsessing over the long-running teen drama The Grove.
So far, her senior year has been spent trying to sort out her feelings for her maybe-crush Johnny and making plans to stay close to Grandma Lou after graduation. Of course, there’s also that small matter of recently discovering she can fly….
When the fictional world of The Grove crashes into Faith’s reality as the show relocates to her town, she can’t believe it when TV heroine Dakota Ash takes a romantic interest in her.
But her fandom-fueled daydreams aren’t enough to distract Faith from the fact that first animals, then people, have begun to vanish from the town. Only Faith seems able to connect the dots to a new designer drug infiltrating her high school.
But when her investigation puts the people she loves in danger, she will have to confront her hidden past and use her newfound gift - risking everything to save her friends and beloved town.
Sandhya Menon
Ashish Patel didn’t know love could be so… sucky. After being dumped by his ex-girlfriend, his mojo goes AWOL. Even worse, his parents are annoyingly, smugly confident they could find him a better match. So, in a moment of weakness, Ash challenges them to set him up.
Renee Watson
When Nala Robertson reluctantly agrees to attend an open mic night for her cousin-sister-friend Imani's birthday, she finds herself falling in instant love with Tye Brown, the MC. He's perfect, except... Tye is an activist and is spending the summer putting on events for the community when Nala would rather watch movies and try out the new seasonal flavors at the local creamery. In order to impress Tye, Nala tells a few tiny lies to have enough in common with him. As they spend more time together, sharing more of themselves, some of those lies get harder to keep up. As Nala falls deeper into keeping up her lies and into love, she'll learn all the ways love is hard, and how self-love is revolutionary.