With the I Weigh movement, Jameela Jamil has become the face (and voice) of backlash against body shaming.
The Good Place actress has labelled photoshop "anti-feminist" and in a December tweet, which has since had over 10K retweets and 45K likes, described it as being "weaponised against women".
The 32-year-old went on to say, "Men who age are sexy in HD. Women mostly just shouldn’t dare age. Men can celebrate the inevitable, we must fear it," while comparing images of Josh Brolin (50) and George Clooney (57), to Sandra Bullock (54) and Nicole Kidman (51).
This has lead, in part, to her mother Shireen Jamil, 63, taking part in an "anti-airbrushing photo shoot to celebrate the natural beauty of growing older".
The shoot took place with Lumen, a dating app for people over 50 years old.
“When I was contacted about the photo shoot, I was initially shocked, but also very grateful to be afforded an opportunity to empower others, especially women of a similar age, and victims of domestic abuse,” Jamil has said of the shoot.
“I’m immensely proud of my daughter’s achievements and her campaigning to ban Photoshop and embrace one’s true self by pushing back on ageism and sexism. The body should be celebrated for its natural beauty, whatever its age the scars it may carry.”
Unairbrushed activist
Jamil was once a model but has revealed she has not posed for a photo in over 40 years.
The 63-year-old was subjected to years of domestic abuse, which left her with a number of scars.
Despite leaving her husband in the mid-1990s, she only reported his abuse in 2013. It was then that she discovered that in British law, domestic abuse fell under the category of common assault, and in order to be legally acted upon, any crimes needed to be reported within six months of taking place to be acted upon.
This ultimately lead to Jamil campaigning for a change in the law, and in 2015 'Shireen's Law' came into effect, eliminated a time limit on the reporting of domestic abuse cases.
Jamil hopes that her campaign with Lumen will empower others.
“I found it immensely challenging to face a camera, but the team put me completely at ease. I’m hoping these images will help to inspire confidence in other older people, of all genders, whose sense of self-worth has, for whatever reason, been dented,” she said. “I believe in ageing gracefully rather than trying to hold back time. In the words of Keats, ‘a thing of beauty is a joy forever, it’s loveliness increases.”
