Photos of women in bikinis are far from rare on social media, but there’s one in particular that’s put a smile on thousands of faces since it was uploaded last week.
The woman in the image, Lesley Miller, is 21 years old and only recently bought her first two-piece swimsuit.
This might not sound like a particularly momentous event, but for Miller it was. That colourful bikini signified an end to 18 years of waiting for her body to look a certain way — the way it was “supposed” to.
“I kept my body covered up and hidden away. I told myself that one day I would finally let myself be seen; I would finally do all of the things I dreamed of when I was enough,” Miller explained in a Facebook post.
“Thin enough, happy enough, confident enough.”
The Texas woman had felt ashamed of her body her whole life, recalling a moment when she was three years old and her classmates asked why she was so much bigger than them.
“When I was seven, I lied to the lady at Weight Watchers, desperate to sit in on meetings full of middle aged women trying to shed a few pounds,” she continued.
Watch: Meghan Ramsay on the effects of poor self esteem. (Post continues after video.)
At age nine, Miller went to a weight loss camp; at 11, she had a gastric band fitted, becoming the youngest person to have a surgical weight loss procedure.
