A woman named Jae West stood in her underwear in central London last month with marker pens in her hands in order to promote body positivity and self-acceptance as she asked people to draw hearts on her bare skin if they had ever felt self-conscious about the way they looked, according to The Huffington Post.
A woman from Boise, Idaho, Amy Pence-Brown, recently did the same, receiving an overwhelmingly positive response from the public.
"I'm standing for anyone who has struggled with a self-esteem issue, like me, because all bodies are valuable. To support self-acceptance, draw on my body,” read the chalk board that the mom was holding as she stood blindfolded at a farmer’s market in Boise.
People went beyond drawing hearts on the woman’s body. They reportedly wrote phrases such as “you are beautiful,” “stand strong,” and “badass” on her skin as well.
“[Jae West] was thin, and white, and young,” explained the self-identified “feminist mom.”
“So what if you were fat, what if you were about forty, and a mum, and what if you were somewhere different, like Boise, Idaho?”
Pence-Brown has been fighting for self-love for a while now, according to Buzzfeed News. She started the Boise Rad Fat Collective, which is “a group of socially engaged Idahoans of all shapes and sizes who are fed up with mainstream media and society telling us what a valuable body should do/be/act/look like,” according to her blog.
As powerful as her recent actions were, Pence-Brown had even more influential words.
“I made peace with my body long ago, and I want to help other people get to that place,” she said.
“We can’t truly love one another until we fully love ourselves. And once we do, I guarantee, that together we can move mountains.”