Jennifer Weiner Smashes Your Swimsuit Fears With Awesome Facebook Post

Photo courtesy Jennifer Weiner

Like most of us, Philly author Jennifer Weiner is headed to the beach this weekend. And, like most of us, she’s had struggles with her weight and body image. But she’s not letting it stop her from showing off her swimsuit-clad body in a new Facebook post.

Weiner, a 46-year-old mother of two, shared the photo you see here on her personal Facebook page on Thursday along with the following message:

This is the swimsuit I’ll be wearing to the beach this holiday weekend.

I know we are inching – slowly! – toward the idea that you don’t have to be a size zero, or a teenager, to look good/be allowed on the beach.

I also know that, even in the era of the plus-size bikini and the stretch-mark mom, too many of us would rather be skinned alive than put on a swimsuit….and that too many of us are missing out on all the fun of swimming and sunning, kayaking and paddleboarding, digging for clams and collecting shells, walking our dogs on the sand and holding our children in the water.

Science shows that the more non-supermodel bodies we see, the less likely we are to beat up on ourselves. That’s true for women, and for girls, too many of whom start worrying way too early about how they look and what needs fixing.

We all need to be the change we want to see in the world…and so, this weekend, I hope you’ll consider being the woman that the women and girls in YOUR life see in a swimsuit.

#bethechange
#weartheswimsuit

After seeing the post, we asked Weiner about her current workout routine — something she sticks to mostly for her mental health, she tells us:

“That body you’re looking at is the result of Pure Barre at 17th and Walnut Street,” she tells Be Well Philly, adding that she’s been going there for about a year and a half. “I don’t know that I’m their top pick as a poster child, but…”

Weiner explains that she’s also been doing yoga at South Street’s Yoga Garden and some spinning at Flywheel on Locust Street. “It’s like, no matter how hard you work, you end up soaked,” she laughs. “If you go in there and kill it or don’t kill it, you are strangely going to wind up equally drenched.”

Weiner says that as much as her workouts help improve her physical health, she’s mainly into it for what goes on in her head. “It’s a mental health thing more than anything else,” Weiner explains. “If you’re going to work from home and be in front of a computer all the time, it’s good to sweat every day”

Weiner has her first children’s book coming out this September (it’s called The Littlest Bigfoot) followed one month later by Hungry Heart, an essay collection-cum-memoir. And it turns out that the latter influenced her decision to post the photo, something she probably wouldn’t have done before.

“This book is going to be very personal and revealing,” she says. “I was thinking about this picture. Anytime a woman puts a picture out there, it’s like, Oh my God, people are going to look at me differently! Well, with this new book, they’ll be looking at me differently as well. That will be soul bearing as opposed to physical bearing, but this is still good practice.”

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