Jameela Jamil

 

Photo of Jameela Jamil

        It's no secret that all different forms of media have a huge   impact on consumers, especially young and impressionable women. In Hollywood films, women are portrayed in a specific way, shaping and creating the beauty standard of young girls to be impossibly thin, but still curvy, have long legs, but still be small, and to possess eurocentric features. Jameela Jamil is painfully aware of this reality, especially since landing her role as Tahani Al-Jamil in The Good Place. Since gaining a fanbase through this show, Jamil has been using her platform to voice her concerns about stigmatizing women's sexualities, to fight against systemic racism, and to "call out" companies and other celebrities on harmful behaviors. 

        Born in London in 1986, Jamil did not have an easy childhood. She was born with congenital hearing loss as well as labyrinthitis, which she has several surgeries to correct. When she was nine she was diagnosed with Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a genetic disorder affecting the connective tissue in the body. At twelve years old, she was diagnosed with coeliac disease, and at just 15 years old, she began to suffer from anorexia nervosa, which motivated her to start her activism once she gained a platform.

iweigh cover

    In 2018, Jamil was inspired to start a body positivity campaign called "iweigh" after seeing a photo of the Kardashian sisters detailing their weights. She captioned her first post “ I'm so fucking tired of seeing women just ignore what’s amazing about them and their lives and their achievements, just because they don’t have a bloody thigh gap". She then encouraged women, and men, to take a selfie or a picture of themselves, leave it completely unedited, and caption it with all of the "weight" they hold in the world. For example, Jamil's own post was captioned "I weigh: Great friends, loving my job, body positivity activist, loving myself despite what the media says, a lovely relationship, and overcoming my eating disorder". On top of starting iweigh, Jamil is also extremely vocal about the toxic culture surrounding dieting supplements, appetite suppressants, and "detox teas". In an interview with Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Jamil called out the Kardashians and rapper Cardi B. for promoting detox teas stating “It’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing: Just because you look like a woman, we trust you and we think you’re on our side, but you are selling us something that really doesn’t make us feel good …. You’re selling us self-consciousness".

    Despite all of Jamil's body positivity activism, she is far from perfect, and acknowledges that. On her social media platforms, Jamil refers to herself as a "Feminist in Training". Jamil has even been accused of "flattening" her body positivity movement to include less plus sized women, seeing that she herself is conventionally attractive.  In an interview with Forbes in 2019 Jamil stated, "It’s very important in this day and age of cancel culture and call out culture to remind people that nobody is born with perfect moral purity, that we all have something to learn. And as our society and humanity continue to progress, there will be more learning for all of us. We'll have to constantly update ourselves like iPhones. And that's okay. It's okay to not know all the answers. I worry that with this moral superiority that seems to exist on social media, that some people will be afraid to put their hands up and admit they have any ignorance. I am not perfect. I have to constantly check myself, and I want to normalize that and make it okay to work on yourself."

    To learn more about Jameela Jamil's body positivity movement, click the link below to visit iweigh. 

                                                        https://iweighcommunity.com/

Citations:

Dickson, E.J. How Jameela JAMIL Built a Brand around Body Positivity. 4 Dec. 2018, www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/12/4/18124392/jameela-jamil-good-place-body-positivity.

Doherty, Brendan. “Icon Of Impact: Jameela Jamil Is The Modern Activist We Need.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 10 Oct. 2019, www.forbes.com/sites/bdoherty/2019/10/10/icon-of-impact-jameela-jamil-is-the-modern-activist-we-need/?sh=cdfdc8012a38.

“I Weigh Community.” I Weigh, 12 Feb. 2020, iweighcommunity.com/.

Olivia Fleming Olivia Fleming is the former Features Director at HarpersBAZAAR.com. “Jameela Jamil Is the Feminist-in-Progress We Need Right Now.” Harper's BAZAAR, 6 Nov. 2019, www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/politics/a29564304/jameela-jamil-gloria-steinem-women-who-dare/.