There is power in making our choices and standing by them. Where Reece chooses to shame all bodies over a certain unnamed size, we must pair our personal convictions with a willingness to respect the bodily autonomy of people with different identities, perspectives, and circumstances if we are to have any hope of building a culture that truly reflects the breadth of human body diversity. In one of the quotes above, Reece counsels us to “be brave” and face the universal truth she proposes, as though losing weight were a radical departure from norms and expectations. The deeper implication being that body acceptance is a form of cowardice.

This, ultimately, was the point that offended me most. Whatever ill may be spoken of all of you, those who believe and doubt, those who ask questions and debate facts, those who strive to understand the feelings and positions of people who differ from you, those who still fight with disordered eating and eating disorders, those who struggle with accepting the person you are and with discovering the person you want to be, those who battle with daily visibility and grotesque harassment and well-meaning concern and the wish, understandable, forgivable, to just be “normal” — none of you want for bravery. Indeed, you are the bravest people I know.