Once again, Jameela Jamil has reminded us that feminism isn’t about tearing other women down.
Jameela Jamil and the Kardashians have been locked in a war of words for some time now. Jamil – who is as a famous for I Weigh, her body positivity campaign on social media, as she is her role as Tahani in The Good Place – has made it her business to call the KUWTK stars out for advertising appetite suppressants and weight loss products on their own Instagram accounts.
They, in turn, have insisted that Jamil is living in a “negative energy space” and is a “silly person”.
However, Jamil has now admitted that her ongoing back-and-forth with the Kardashian family was not at all what she wanted or expected when she first called for them to “check their moral compasses”.
“Obviously, how things have gone between us [in the past year] was not expected,” Jamil told Us Magazine.
Jamil also suggested that she’d much rather see the Kardashians lifted up for their incredible accomplishments rather than for how they look or how much they weigh.
“A year ago, I saw a picture of all of the Kardashians… with numbers of their weight written across them rather than how much money [they make], how [much they are] worth and [how they] have built up this empire,” she explained. “And those are the only kind of numbers we ever see on men — we see how much money they are worth, or what kind of jobs [they have], or how many awards they’ve won.”
Jamil added that she is sick and tired of misogynist media outlets thinking this is “the most important information we think there is about women” and that women should, instead, be praised for things like “financial independence [and] activism.”
While she acknowledges that the Kardashians have done good things, though, Jamil has also said that she will not be backing down any time soon.
She told People magazine: ‘I’m not nervous to call anyone out. I think people are just scared and greedy. I think girls, in particular, are scared because we’re always told to not be unlikable, and not to be difficult, and to be perfect.
“I would like to, hopefully, be a force of change in that [and] show people that sometimes you have to be scary, and you have to be intimidating, and you have to be bold, and you have to be unlikable in order to protect yourself and to protect other people. It’s like a moral responsibility.”
She finished by saying: “More people should be doing this. I’m doing the bare minimum, and everyone else should be doing the same.”
Jamil famously set up her I Weigh account on Instagram in a bid to combat the ongoing body-shaming narrative of social media. With over 550,000 followers and 2,652 posts, the account places value on women’s achievements and values, rather than how many kilograms they weigh, in a bid to help them “feel valuable and see how amazing we are, and look beyond the flesh on our bones”.
“We don’t know what men weigh, we don’t care,” she said, when asked about her campaign’s success. “We only care about what women weight. We don’t care about anything else about them, we just care how little space they are taking up in this world, and I am fed up about it.
“So I posted about what I weigh, which is my financial independence, that I’m self-made, the fact that I’m in a wonderful relationship, the cancer I’ve overcome, the struggles I’ve overcome, the things I’ve been through, the things I’m still going through. I weigh the sum of all my parts.”
Image: Getty
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