While Ashley Graham's Sports Illustrated cover last year made history for embracing more body diversity, this year the woman behind the swimsuit issue is making waves for promoting body confidence. On Wednesday, MJ Day, the editor of the magazine's swimsuit issue, posed in a bikini to call for more body-positivity.
Day posted a video to Instagram of herself in a bikini and holding her son, captioning it, “Deep.Breath. If I’m going to talk the talk I am going to walk the walk."
"Funny how I have spent my life on a beach since childhood and I have never truly felt comfortable in a swimsuit," she wrote. "Even at my thinnest. We need to love ourselves in the present. No matter what."
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Because the 2017 swimsuit issue is meant to celebrate women of all sizes and backgrounds, she says, she decided to open up about her insecurities. Day put on a bathing suit herself and filmed the video as part of a partnership between with the @WomenIRL Instagram account and Health.com to promote body confidence.
"I’ve been producing the annual Swimsuit issue for 19 years, but today I’m the one in a bathing suit, and here’s why," she says in the video. "This year’s issue will showcase the widest diversity of women in SI history. Women of all ages, and shapes, and from many different backgrounds."
Day urged her followers to post videos of themselves in bikinis, and talk about what they "model" in their lives.
"We want to celebrate strength, beauty, and more, so we want to know: What do you model?" she asked. "So I’ll kick us off. I model determination. I’m determined to get out the message that there is not a singular definition of beauty."
While SI is making more strides towards body diversity, magazines and social media still don't always make us feel great about our bodies, so it's inspiring to see the woman behind this magazine get real about body confidence.
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