After the trolls came out, as they are wont to do, Bertinelli responded with grace and compassion, and a reminder that it’s actually slightly more important to be a good person than to be ripped. “To all of you that would sit in judgment of my body, the photo, and my reason for posting it, I hope you find a place in your heart to not judge yourself as harshly as you judge others,” she wrote in the caption of another selfie.
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“I have dealt with judgment my entire life starting from when I was a young girl. It has taken me a long time to realize that my judgment, with patient discernment, is the only judgment that counts. More importantly, what is my character like? Am I kind to people?” she continued, stating plainly, “For the first time in my life, I love my body as it is. It’s not the 20-year-old body that I hated and it really is a shame that I hated that beautiful body. Yes, it was a very different body than the one I now inhabit, but it hadn’t yet been through the journey I needed to go through. Even as challenging as it’s been and is, I am grateful for this journey and I wouldn’t trade this body for my 20-year-old body any day.”
I know too many women who inherited body image issues from their mothers, mothers who don’t grow out of that mindset. If even one of them is inspired to hit pause on the negative self-talk for even a day because of Bertinelli’s posts, what a gift! And if I could tell my younger self that the “have you called Jenny yet?” lady from TV would be writing movingly about self-acceptance on Instagram, she would probably say, “what’s Instagram?” but she’d also love it.
