Earlier this week, Rumer Willis took to Instagram with a message of body positivity. “My body does so much for me and works so hard for me,” her caption read. “But more often than not the only thing it hears it what is wrong with it. What is lacking or what there is too much of.” The actress went on to note that being quarantined hadn’t made her relationship to her body easier, what with the added struggles of cultivating a new routine, finding the discipline to stay active at home, and combating the very human desire to turn to food for comfort. But it was a subsequent post, shared via IGTV, that made Willis’s appeal for self-acceptance especially poignant.
“When I look at someone who’s taken a great photo and is talking about body image and loving themselves, part of me wants to be like, ‘Well fuck you, you’re perfect. Why are you even complaining, or how could you even begin to have issues?'” Willis says. “So I wanted to just kind of show you guys what I look like.” Sporting simple, gray separates from SKIMS—Kim Kardashian West‘s shaping lingerie line—Willis turned while she talked, offering an unfiltered view of her figure. Although she took a beat to point out the parts of her body she worried about, she urged her audience to dispense with the idea that there was one “perfect standard.”
With many of us spending a lot more time at home, social media has provided a necessary link to the world outside—if one that can also cause scrollers to question their habits, productivity, and, yes, their own bodies. The lesson here? Follow Willis’s lead, and make cultivating self-love the priority during this strange and demanding time. “I’m working really hard to try to eat healthy, and work out, and motivate myself to be strong, but I’m also trying to motivate myself constantly to have acceptance,” she said. It’s a muscle we could all stand to flex more often.