Picture the scene. The love of your life has just asked you to marry them, you're running high of those gooey endorphins and have potentially started planning what your big day will be like.
You announce your engagement on social media because you want to shout it from the bleeding rooftops, and then a direct message comes your ways, asking whether you want to to hire a personal trainer to get yourself wedding fit.
You politely decline telling the PT you are happy with your figure, but thanks for the offer.
Instead of understanding that you don't want their services, the PT replies explaining that, actually, you don't look your best, and if you don't hire a PT, you will look back on your photos of your wedding day will haunt you forever.
Pretty terrible right?
Well, this is what happened to Cassie Young, a presenter and body positive social media babe from Atlanta.
And, because Young doesn't take any sh**, especially from fat-shaming personal trainers, she responded in a polite, yet firm manner.
She told him:
I've worked really hard at accepting my self-worth and disassociating the idea that my weight is a direct correlation to my value as a person or how much people will like me. And I found someone who loves me no holds barred - just the way I am, thus proving that true. So, for him and for me, I'm gonna continue on my health journey by eating cleaner and working in cardio and weights - but not because I'm worried about how I look. I do it so I have extra time with him.
Job done, right? She has outlined very clearly what her stance is, explaining her journey with her self-image as well as the fact that she already does workout, not for weight loss, but for her health.
Clear, calm and not rude at all.
Three guesses what the PT did? Apologised and said goodbye?
Course not. He told Young that she can't possibly be happy with the way she looks and that something needs to be done immediately.
Young posted the long exchange on her Facebook and Instagram page, in which she extensively laid out how beauty-standards are socially constructed and how she is actively trying to love herself and see herself through a liberated perspective of health and happiness.
The dude, however, would just not get it and insisted she was actually deeply shamed by her own body.
Thankfully she shut him down by telling him, 'You are perpetuating the problem and I refuse to play that game. I reject your notion of operating on superficiality and looks, and I embrace my inner health goals.'
Young posted the full exchange on her Facebook page with a long caption explaining the importance of self worth.
'Life is waiting for you. It's too short to be spent worrying about a belly roll. Go be happy and live it to your fullest.'
The post has gotten over 2000 likes over Instagram and Facebook and hundreds of comments of support.
Young has an amazing outlook on life - one we could all do with a dose of. And though there's nothing wrong with wanting to look your 'best' for those wedding photos, we should all think what our 'best' really looks like.
Yes, a flat stomach and firm arms might be great, but knowing how happy and confident you are is probably the best look of all.
