When Amy Schumer was photographed topless by Annie Leibovitz in 2015 for the Pirelli calendar, she said that she had ‘never felt more beautiful’. But of course, internet trolls jumped on any opportunity to criticise her curvy figure.
Now, a psychology student at the University of West Georgia named Whitney has made an astute observation, comparing Amy Schumer’s portrait to a sculpture of the Greek goddess of beauty, Aphrodite. She posted the two images together on Instagram.
Whitney captioned the post:
“On the left is a sculpture of the goddess Aphrodite, who is renowned for her beauty. On the right is @amyschumer. What a wonderful resemblance between two beautiful women. So many women and young girls are shamed by the media and fashion industry for not having a flat stomach and not being a size zero. But look, the goddess of beauty is portrayed here with stomach rolls and doesn’t have a perfectly smooth, toned body. I want to remind everyone that they do not have to be a Victoria’s Secret model to be a beautiful goddess with a beautiful body. Your body is not bad, ugly, or wrong. Embrace your inner goddess. #bodypositive #amyschumer #everybodyisagoodbody #Aphrodite”
The image has already got a lot of attention, racking up almost 27,000 likes and over 700 comments. And with all the good comments of course, there have been some negative ones, which inspired Whitney to make another post.
She captioned the image:
“Many people have commented on the fact that Amy has been accused of stealing jokes. They have been doing this as an attempt to invalidate my reasons for posting the picture. I’m in no position to say if Amy had stolen jokes or not. There is no correlation between the accusation and my statement about body positivity. Other comments are about how Amy looks or some of the myths surrounding Aphrodite. One comment was about Aphrodite having multiple partners. Well, she is also the goddess of pleasure and sex. The comments are attempting to slut shame Aphrodite and Amy, and by extension, any woman who fits their description. If they wanted to describe sexual promiscuity within Greek mythology, they should have commented about Zeus.
“I didn’t know the post would blow up like this, so I was no where near prepared for the onslaught of negative and hateful comments. I can’t imagine the hell that people who are shamed for their bodies must feel all the time on instagram. It’s a disgusting trend of hate and malice that only furthers my point on the importance of loving bodies and accepting bodies, no matter what they look like.”
The message she was trying to convey was so inspiring that even Amy Schumer herself endorsed the post!
And at the end of the day, who else’s opinion matters?
