‘People tell me to go to the gym but I don’t care – I love my body’

Chantel Smith is a TikTok body positivity activist with over 50k followers, who regularly posts videos of herself in creatively styled outfits or lingerie. She self-describes as a “fat girl” and uses her channel to promote honest body confidence.

Unfortunately, as is all too common on the platform, Smith gets lots of hate comments every day. These, according to the US Sun, often come from people who chide her for promoting obesity or who urge her to just go and work out.

Smith is able to use these comments as fuel: specifically, to call out the objectification plus-sized people face and encourage women to intentionally take up space, no matter the public reactions.

She wrote to her TikTok followers: “My comments section on some of my TikTok videos lately has once again been hit with the ‘go gym’ and ‘promoting obesity’ and much worse for simply just creating fashion videos.

“It’s either ‘you’re too big’ or ‘you have curves in all the right places,’ which neither of these are compliments by the way.”

She added: “I’m tired of women’s bodies constantly getting compared and picked apart.”

Many TikTok users seem to be benefiting from Chantel Smith’s content. One wrote: “So pretty I love your confidence your [sic] a role model to many.”

Another said: “Yaaassss sis you are glowing!!! promote the body positivity we need more of that!!!”

Smith, who also runs an Instagram that displays pictures of her curves, bare skin, and natural hair, doesn’t let the haters faze her and knows exactly who her messages are for.

One of her most popular videos says: “It’s not my job to make you feel comfortable. It’s not my job to justify my existence to you.”

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