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Lesego Legobane is a 24-year-old photographer, model, and body-positivity influencer known as @thickleeyonce based in Johannesburg, South Africa. When her image was used in a body-shaming meme (below right) on Twitter, she responded with a tweet that has since gone crazy viral:

The meme, which was posted by Twitter user Leyton Mokgerepi, compared Lesego to a straight-size model.

Lesego's clapback was retweeted more than 291,000 times and received more than 911,000 likes from users as high profile as Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj. "I'm still pinching myself. I don't know how all that happened‬," Lesego says.

She hasn't always been so confident. "‪I struggled with self-esteem issues as a teenager, became self-conscious, and believed something was wrong with me," she says of the days before discovering photography several years ago."Then I started taking photographs of myself. I saw a beautiful girl in the photos and I decided I'd no longer be cruel toward her.‬"

Still, Lesego can only control the way she treats herself. "‪I get so much backlash on social media," she says of people who berate her size. Nevertheless, when she was tagged in Leyton's meme, she didn't care to fight him — after all, he was a stranger she'd never even heard of. "‪I just needed him to know his place," she says.‬ "I hate it when men think that [women like me] are desperate and that we like every other guy because we don't have options. It's utter nonsense."

Although the original meme received more than 5,600 likes, Lesego says the virality of her response has been a beacon of hope: "I very was happy to see we live in a time where body-shaming is no longer acceptable, it's no longer a thing that will be acceptable in social media, which is why that tweet got the kind of reaction and retweets that it did," Lesego told South African news channel eNCA. "I think things are getting better, but I think we still live in a world where women's bodies are constantly objectified."

To that point, the other woman pictured in the meme, a swimsuit model named Joëlle Kayembe, wasn't thrilled with the meme, either:

Leyton didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Cosmopolitan.com, but told HuffPost UK, "Quite frankly I didn't mean to denigrate Lesego or body-shame big girls. I'm not about that life, I'm a good guy. I didn't mean to make her feel bad about herself."

Leyton later tweeted a photo of Lesego's photo with the text, "girlfriend goals."

However, it was widely received as too little too late.

What's that? It's the sound of women all over the world rejoicing now that Twitter's tolerance for size-shaming appears to be waning.

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From: Cosmopolitan US