16 Body-Positive Wins That Made Us Love Ourselves More In 2016

One of the (many) privileges I have as a member of #TeamSELF: I constantly get to read and write about people who are spreading body positivity. If you're not familiar, body positivity is all about accepting and loving your body as is. It's the idea that all bodies are good bodies. Every body is beautiful, regardless of a person's size, shape, or color. Sounds pretty simple, right? But body positivity isn't always easy to practice. It requires letting go of society's prescribed ideas of what is and what isn't beautiful (and, wow, has society done a good job of forcing those ideas on us!). And it requires embracing every facet of yourself—any so-called flaws—and loving it all.

Thankfully, there's a group of body positive activists and women leading the charge. These 16 women, brands, and campaigns are just a few of many body positive champions from this year. Read their stories below, and brace yourself for some mega body posi vibes.

Body activist Kenzie Brenna started an incredible new Instagram trend this year: #CelluliteSaturday. Every Saturday, the vlogger shares a picture of her cellulite on Instagram to help normalize the common body feature. And she's encouraging other women to love and embrace their cellulite, too. Since Brenna started the trend, other body posi activists have joined in, sharing their own #CelluliteSaturday snaps. "I hope that when people click on the hashtag, they recognize [cellulite] is a part of our bodies that can be totally acceptable and we don’t have to get rid of it," Brenna told SELF. Mission accomplished, Kenzie!

Read more about #CelluliteSaturday here.

Plus-size blogger and model Simone Mariposa stripped down for her first nude photoshoot this year—and the photos are breathtaking. Mariposa posed with her body covered in glitter, proudly embracing "every bump & roll" of her body. Mariposa told SELF that initially she wasn't totally confident posing au naturel, but she wanted to do it for herself and other women who look like her. "There are people who look just like me and want to see a representation like this, so I might as well just go for it and not hold myself back," Mariposa said.

Read more about Simone Mariposa's empowering nude photoshoot here.

London-based artist Jojo Oldham went viral this year when she created a dress covered with real comments people have made about her body. The comments are a mix of compliments—"stunning"—and negative body talk—"muffin tops"—and Oldham wears them all on her dress, posing with a smile on her face. "I came to this point where I felt comfortable with myself, and that in turn made me not embarrassed of all the things people said to me before," Oldham told SELF. "Now, it’s just background noise to me. That's why I could make something like this and it comes from a positive place."

Read more about Jojo Oldham's body talk dress here.

Simone Mariposa also made news this year when she created the viral Twitter hashtag #WeWearWhatWeWant. The hashtag encouraged women to stand up to society's misconception that only certain body types can wear certain clothes. "Stop making it 'unacceptable' for plus women to wear clothes that show skin," Mariposa wrote on Twitter. "It's not your job to make our wardrobes. Showing skin isn't exclusive to smaller girls. It's okay for a plus size woman to let her body breathe in her clothing." Mariposa posted a photo of her looking amaze in a crop top, and other women soon followed suit, tagging their pics #WeWearWhatWeWant in one powerful, body-positive campaign.

Read more about #WeWearWhatWeWant here.

Model Ashley Graham had an amazing 2016: She became the first size 16 woman to score a spot on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue, and she spoke out countless times in the name of body diversity and body confidence. One of our fav moments from the model's year: When she showed a little love to her cellulite on Instagram. "A little cellulite never hurt nobody," she captioned a pic that showed her own cellulite. "Stop judging yourself, embrace the things that society has called 'ugly.'" Yasss queen!

Read more about Ashley Graham's body positive Instagram here.

Life coach Jess Pack shared an inspiring photo after a day of shopping left her feeling insecure. "Terrible dressing room lighting made me feel lumpy and squishier than normal," she wrote on Instagram. Her solution: Put on her favorite outfit and pose for the camera. It helped her realize that a shopping experience can't take away her power. "Never let something like cellulite or muffin top or a bad shopping experience make you feel less of yourself," she wrote. "Those things do not define you unless you let them. Be better than those demons."

Read more about Jess Pack's dressing room experience here.

Orange is the New Black actress Danielle Brooks made us feel more confident at the gym this year. In an Instagram video, Brooks talked about comparing her body to another woman at the gym—and how she realized that's not productive. "Why just two minutes ago I was feeling great and now I'm not?" she says in the vid. "And I realized the reason I was feeling so great is because I was comparing myself to yesterday's Danielle. And today's Danielle is better than yesterday's. And that's why I felt so good." It's a must-watch for anyone who's felt insecure at the gym.

Read more about Danielle Brooks' pep talk here.

Models Charli Howard and Clémentine Desseaux teamed up this year to create the All Woman Project, which pushes back on the lack of diversity in the modeling industry. Their first campaign: A photo shoot featuring stunning models of all shapes and sizes, completely unretouched. The models all look confident and incredible in the photos, begging the question: Why aren't more fashion campaigns this beautifully real? That's Howard and Desseaux's goal. "We really want the media to celebrate women of all shapes and sizes and to stop training girls to think they have to be these white, skinny, tall, beauty ideals," Howard told SELF.

Read more about the All Woman Project here.

Ash Soto used to let her vitiligo—a skin condition that causes white patches to appear all over the body—affect her confidence, but she's way past that now. On Instagram, the 23-year-old proudly shows off her skin, using a marker to trace the patches and create amazing art. "Sometimes I think my vitiligo is painted on like a map from another dimension," Soto wrote on Instagram. Her images are stunning, and help inspire others to love any so-called physical "flaws" they might have. "Finally [I'm] at a point in my life where I can say I love the skin I'm in," Soto wrote on Instagram. "I hope this post inspires all girls to be comfortable with themselves and their bodies." Mission accomplished, Ash!

Read more about Ash Soto's journey with her vitiligo here.

During the frenzy that was the 2016 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, BuzzFeed took it upon themselves to create an incredible size-inclusive lingerie fashion show. Their video shows regular women of all shapes and sizes, strutting their stuff on a runway in sexy lingerie. It's all sorts of empowering.

Read more about BuzzFeed's fashion show here.

Harley Dabbs survived a house fire when she was just two years old, but the burns she sustained left scars across her body. Her scars used to affect her confidence, but today, Dabbs uploads pictures to Instagram that proudly show her scars. She's encouraging all women to love the skin they're in. "I know I don’t fit society’s image of what 'beautiful' is, but now I know I don’t want to," Dabbs told Glamour.

Read more about Harley Dabbs here.

In response to the #thighgap trend, body positive activists started posting photos this year that show off their #mermaidthighs, AKA how their thighs touch together. More than a thousand women joined in, sharing confident, beautiful photos. It's definitely a body-positive trend we can get behind.

Read more about mermaid thighs here.

Model Iskra Lawrence seriously championed body positivity this year. Not only did she post an incredible clapback on Instagram to a commenter who called her "fat," but she also stripped down on a New York City subway to preach body positivity. "I grew up hating what I saw in the mirror because society told me I was not good enough," Lawrence told the straphangers. "I thought there was something wrong because I didn't have a thigh gap, that I had cellulite, that I wasn't 'skinny enough'...we are so much more than that." The empowering video went viral, natch.

Read more about Iskra Lawrence's body positivity PSA here.

When Arna Ýr Jónsdóttir, AKA the beautiful Miss Iceland, was prepping for the Miss Grand International beauty pageant in Las Vegas this year, the owner of the beauty pageant told her she needed to "lose weight" if she wanted to compete. Miss Iceland was not here for that unhealthy suggestion, so she quit the competition (you can read her letter to the pageant here) and started speaking out about the body-shaming she endured. "Yes, my shoulders are a bit broader than the other girl's but that is because I was a member of the Icelandic national athletics team and I am proud of that," Jónsdóttir told The Iceland Monitor after the incident. "Personally, I think I'm fine as I am." And so do we, Jónsdóttir! The best part of this story: Nike made Jónsdóttir a face of the brand after she went viral for standing up to the pageant.💃

Read more about Arna Ýr Jónsdóttir here.

Mom of two Rachel Graham lost a remarkable 90 pounds this year, but her weight loss resulted in some excess skin on her stomach. Sure, it makes Graham insecure from time to time, but she posted a stomach-baring selfie to show people that she's more than OK with how she looks. "Do I regret losing weight? Hellllll noooooo. NEVER," Graham wrote on Instagram. "Not even a slightest thought. I am more FIT than I've ever been in my entire life...I'd be lying if I said my loose skin wasn't an insecurity of mine, but I refuse to let it consume me. It doesn't hold me back like the weight used to. This stomach has grown two beautiful boys." Self-love for the win.

Read more about Rachel Graham's selfie here.

Model and mom Denise Bidot has repeatedly seen brands airbrush her stretch marks, and it left her feeling insecure. "I’d shoot these beautiful images, and while I'd feel beautiful on set, I’d see the images retouched and it did start to affect me," Bidot told SELF. "I started thinking, 'Maybe I’d be beautiful if I didn’t have these [stretch marks]." But Lane Bryant thought otherwise. The retailer kept Bidot's stretch marks as-is in a photograph of her modeling a Lane Bryant bikini, a wow did Denise and other women love it. "Thank you @lanebryant for loving my body, stretch marks and all," Bidot captioned the pic on Instagram, which was swarmed with love from her followers. Major props, Lane Bryant, and to Denise Bidot for being so damn confident.

Read more about Denise Bidot's Lane Bryant ad here.

Here's to a 2017 full of even more self-love!

Related:

• This Model Gave Up On Trying To Be ‘Thin,’ And She's Happier Than Ever
• Ashley Graham Says “Thick Thighs Save Lives"
• Iskra Lawrence: How I Learned to Love My Body