In an interview with Shape, she explained that she’d received an onslaught of negative comments after sharing a progress shot to her Instagram account. But of all the jabs, there was one in particular that really struck a nerve:
“No hips. Not sexy.”
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“It’s not right for people to project their own preferences on other people’s body type, especially when we can’t change some things,” she told the publication.
“I can’t change my hip bone structure, and even if I could, I wouldn’t. I’m proud of my body for what it is, for what it can do and how far I can push it.”
Sadly, as she has over 1.3m Insta followers scrutinising her every move daily, Anna Victoria is no stranger to being body shamed. Still, she knows that as long as she feels good about herself, it really doesn’t matter what other people think of her.
“I’m not doing this, working hard, eating healthy, pushing myself to be the best that I can be, for them,” she added.
“How someone else feels about my body as I go through my fitness journey is irrelevant. Their comments might be annoying, sure, but no amount of outside opinions about my body is going to change what I decide to do on my fitness journey.”
That said, Anna Victoria knows there’s no “one size fits all” approach when it comes to the perfect figure. And she believes it’s “ignorant” to think otherwise.
“I would encourage other women who’ve been body-shamed to remember that they are the only person whose opinion matters and that we define our own standard of beauty,” she said.
“To quote Dita Von Teese, ‘You can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world and there’s still going to be somebody who hates peaches.”
Preach.
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