Gabi Gregg is a beautiful woman, and I love her Fatkini pictures and her spirit. Let’s all put on bikinis and take pictures!!! It’s gorgeous, it’s empowering and it’s about time we celebrated and enjoyed our bodies and our selves. Why not be cool when the sun threatens to take over the whole sky? Why not vamp it up in a two piece, allow some time to find shelter in the shade, easy and free, pretty and pleasing, reclining and relaxing in what could practically be our undies? Exposure to the sun’s rays (within reason of course as they can still be pretty dangerous so don’t skimp on sunblock) is delightful and one of the true blissful attributes of summer. We should take our pleasure and document it, as we all have a right to joy no matter what size we are. If you have a body, you deserve to be happy in it, and that is that.

I am spending my summer in Atlanta, where the weather would be unbearable if I literally were not almost naked all the time. I usually do a bikini bottom and a little t-shirt just to protect all my tattoos from the sun, but I will wear this even when I am not going for a swim! To me – it’s proper attire everywhere! I just wore this ensemble on The View! Why shouldn’t I wear a bikini, and more importantly, why shouldn’t I wear a bikini on TV in front of millions of viewers? It’s hot outside!! it’s hot inside. I am hot, inside and out – so there.

There are many positive comments for Gabi and all her deliciously lovely unclad friends, but there are also those who are saying the photos “promote unhealthy weight”? What is an ‘unhealthy weight’? and also, what the hell is ‘promoting unhealthy weight’ supposed to mean? If we don’t adhere to certain societal standards, we shouldn’t take pictures of ourselves and post them online? Are we not allowed to witness our own reflection, much less enjoy the summer – the water and the sand, the lengthy days and heated nights, the beaches and the barbecues, June/July/August – the most sensual season, truly, as there are few gentle pastimes greater than casually eating a cool slice of watermelon poolside while flicking the seeds at a sexy stranger, allowing the juice to drip down your graceful neck right into your prodigious cleavage – because it might be considered ‘unhealthy’?

Is thin always healthy? I am not sure if thinness is all you need to get through this life. I have seen some thin people who looked as if they wouldn’t survive a sneeze, so I wouldn’t say that size is a fair indication of health or lack thereof. Perhaps we would all like to change something about ourselves, whether it is weight or height or proportion or age or skin/hair color or even race – but we are merely a product not only of our own collective decisions but also many made before us, before we were even born, and for this, we are what we are. Is it not right to just enjoy and accept who we are at this very moment?

My own relentless obsession with thinness has proved far more detrimental to my health than anything else. In my twenties, I became a terrible alcoholic, not because I needed to drink myself to the brink of insanity for the sake of drunkenness, but because I was so hungry I didn’t know what else to do. I starved my body and drank solely to kill my unfathomable hunger, and in doing so, I nearly killed myself. I took numerous drugs – uppers/downers/inners/outers not to get high, but in order to keep myself from eating.

Food was and is and will be forever my true jones, the drug of choice that will trump all my choices, my eternal nemesis and what I dream of every night, the monkey on my ever widening back. It’s a waste of drugs and drink – because I didn’t appreciate these things on their own merits nor did I ever get truly high – rather I used them as escape route, trying to circumvent my stomach by overloading my nervous system.

All of my self destructive behavior can be traced back to wanting to be thinner, to beat down my appetite with chemical weapons. I waged war on my growling stomach, tried to immobilize the forces within me that existed solely to keep me alive. You can’t win when you battle with yourself. All you do is lose everything, except weight.

I have made peace with my body, and in the most extraordinary of ironies, I have now a body that my younger helplessly addicted, ravaged, starved, drunken, immobilized by workouts self could have only dreamed of having. I may not be as thin as the models in the magazines or other girls on tv, but I look good to myself, which is enough for me. To come to a place where I don’t avoid reflective surfaces – wanting to evade proof that I am who I am as I judged myself relentlessly for being fat/ugly/whatever/anything but beautiful – is a kind of heaven on earth.

All my gratitude to Gabi, the fatkini, mirrors, summer and life. I have learned the hard way to appreciate what I have, what others have, what I have lost and what I have found in all my 43 years (!) and I am just trying to pass it on and put it in a 2 piece.