One of the people I follow on Instagram is Ashley Graham. If you don’t know who she is, she is a plus sized model — and I hate having to use that qualifier. Why can’t we just say model? The main reason I follow her is because she is beautifully accepting and unapologetic about her body. Got a little roll or some cellulite? No need to hide it — it’s part of you, so love it! It’s such a great, healthy attitude to have. But we live in a world of trolls it seems, and anytime there is some person or organization daring to say that some woman who isn’t thin and free from any perceived imperfection is beautiful or sexy, there are always some people who have to stick their worthless two cents in. The comments usually are in this vein:

Stop promoting fat as beautiful.

And what’s really funny is the way these trolls say it. They never come out and say anything as direct and mean as the statement above. Instead, they use a different path. The path of, “Being fat is so unhealthy. I only care about her (whoever that fat chick is) health.”

Hahaha. No.

You can look at a picture of a woman who is overweight and try to make all the snap judgments you want, but you really have no idea about someone’s health. I can hold myself up as an example. My BMI is 35, which puts me in the “obese” category. I don’t smoke. I don’t drink excessively. I don’t have high blood pressure. I don’t have diabetes. I don’t have high cholesterol. I don’t have sleep apnea. I don’t take any prescription medications. I exercise a minimum of 4 days a week (in fact, I ran 5 miles this morning). Now, I admit, I have issues with my knee — I had knee surgery for a torn meniscus in March. But really, by all indicators — except my BMI, I’m healthy. I have friends who are in what would be considered a healthy weight range according to their BMI, but they smoke or have high blood pressure or never exercise. But they’re considered healthy because they are thin.

You can’t look at a person and decide if they are healthy or not simply based on outward appearance. That would mean I’m unhealthy and the smoking, drinking, sedentary thin people are the healthy ones — simply because they are thin.

Hahahaha. No.

So to those people who like to comment that the world is glorifying being fat, and it’s so wrong to make being unhealthy like that okay, I say BS. I see through your crap. You just don’t like looking at fat people. You think they’re gross and ugly and should be ashamed of themselves.

Quit making a woman’s worth in the size of her body.