142 InSTYLE AUGUST 2019
But the spotlight took its toll on Jamil’s already fraught
relationship with her body. “I became really neurotic about
my appearance,” she says. “I was so skinny but thought I
was too fat. I was being so heavily scrutinized that I scruti-
nized myself even more, because no matter what job a
woman has, she’s expected to simultaneously look like a
Victoria’s Secret model.” When tabloids took aim at her for
gaining 75 pounds, the result of taking steroid medication
for her asthma, Jamil reached her breaking point. “The
way the industry tore into me lit a fire in me that I really
needed,” she says. “I doubled down on my right to be any
size I want and my right to take up space in the world.”
It wasn’t until she began therapy—after a breast cancer
scare prompted her to reevaluate her life and move to Los
Angeles—that Jamil finally learned how to cope with her
body dysmorphia. She stopped measuring herself and began
wearing looser clothing to hide her fluctuating weight, even
from herself. “When I look in the mirror, I can’t see what’s
there,” she says. “That’s why instead of practicing body posi-
tivity, I practice body neutrality. I
just don’t think about it anymore.
I used to look in the mirror all the
time—I didn’t realize how much
time I spent thinking about my body
and food and how to look thinner or
prettier. It was so counterintuitive
to happiness. Plus, I had no fucking
hours left in the day.”
Now, rather than thinking about
her appearance, Jamil chooses to
focus on her well-being. “I con-
stantly thank my body for what it
does for me,” she says. “I think about
how it heals and repairs itself, takes
me from point A to B, and allows me to do my job, have sex,
and just live my life. It’s a finely tuned engine that deserves
to be respected, and I’m so grateful for it now.”
Jamil has made it her mission to spread the message of
self-love. Along the way she’s made headlines for calling
out celebrities like Khloé Kardashian and Cardi B for pro-
moting diet suppressants and detox teas on social media.
After realizing that she “could probably be more effective
from the belly of the beast than screaming from the out-
side,” she launched the I Weigh movement on Instagram in
March 2018. Her goal? “To create a safe space on the Inter-
net” where followers measure their worth in achievements,
not pounds. People submit photos—typically a selfie cov-
ered in words and phrases that reflect how they view them-
selves—by tagging the @i_weigh handle, and Jamil shares
the images on the feed. The community lifts each other up
one post at a time. “I talk about everything in the hope that
it stops someone else from feeling as bad as I felt when I
was younger, and if I can do that, it means that I suffered
for a reason,” she says.
With almost a million followers on the I Weigh account,
Jamil is obviously on the right track. She’s currently turning
I Weigh into a full-on company, a logical next step given themovement’s impact so far. People are constantly reaching
out to her to thank her for her work both online and off.
“Every time I fly, someone passes me a handwritten note
on the airplane,” Jamil says, pulling out her phone to show
a photo of the letter she received on her flight the day be-
fore. “It’s an honor, but it also fires me up. There’s so much
more work to do, and I’m only one person.”
She wishes she had more support from her peers but
understands why many are unwilling to speak out about the
same issues. “While celebrities privately congratulate me on
DM or in person at events, they don’t really stand up along-
side me,” says Jamil. “People are too afraid of losing cam-
paigns or money, and they don’t want to be called hypocrites
because they’re still perpetuating this culture. It’s frustrat-
ing, but also, I get it. As women in this industry we are so
fearmongered. I’m just not afraid. I’ve been in pain most of
my life—I’ve lost so many years to being sad. I’m now
driven by that pain. I use it as my fuel, and it gives me confi-
dence. It’s so important to keep the celebrity community in
check, and sometimes that means
pissing people off and losing a lot of
money. But I would rather not be in
this industry at all than be here and
take blood money.”
Jamil has also had to accept the
fact that she’s often surrounded by
those perpetuating the very body
shaming she’s fighting. “I’ve met the
most amazing people, but I’m also
now around the men and women
who are actively complicit in hurting
young people, and that grosses me
out terribly,” she says. “It’s sad and
disheartening. But while I’m here,
I’m here to do a job, and that is to undo all the things
that made me so mentally ill when I was younger. I had
irresponsible icons to look up to, and people didn’t
understand the damage they were doing to young girls.”
She shuns retouching apps like Facetune (“They’re
designed to make you feel like shit about yourself and want
cosmetic surgeries,” she says) and doesn’t allow her images
from photo shoots to be airbrushed beyond the removal of
an occasional stray hair. In the past few years she’s found the
power to say, “You’re not allowed to make me look thinner or
younger, or lighten my skin or make my nose look like a white
person’s nose.” But she recalls a time when, at 23, she was
mortified to see heavily retouched images of herself on bill-
boards around England. “I looked flawless and skinny and
ethereally gorgeous—and I was so embarrassed because it
didn’t look anything like me,” she says. “I didn’t want to leave
the house because people would compare me with that.”
These days Jamil has no interest in others’ opinions—
all that matters is her own. “I genuinely don’t care what
people think of me,” she says. “After coming up through so
much self-hatred, it’s such a big step for me that I value my-
self.” And now she really, really does. “I would take my
number at a party.” nI constantlythank my bodyfor what itdoes for me.Ó