A 19-year-old from Eskasoni First Nation, Nova Scotia is the latest crusader in the fight against body shaming — and she did it with an epic Facebook post.
After the deaths of her father and brother and years of being bullied about her weight, Hannah Battiste found herself in a terrible place where she tried to take her own life.
After getting treatment and doing home-schooling, Hannah woke up one day and realized she needed to start accepting herself for who she was.
That was November. And now, Hannah's epic self-love Facebook post aimed at body shamers and bullies have gained her viral status.
The Facebook post, which has over 6,300 likes, 1,400 shares and 88 comments, shows the Mi'kmaq woman addressing her haters in the most hilarious way with a message posted on her chin that simply reads, "fuck you."
"My reaction when someone judges me.. 'You gained weight'. So what? Being thick is a choice! 'Why do you wear dresses?' Why tf not? If I wanna wear a dress through all the seasons, then I'm going to!" Battiste writes in the post. "No matter what you do, whether it's right or wrong, people are going to judge you.. Go ahead and judge me, I know who I am, and I know my purpose in life 🙌🏽❤️🖕🏽"
So why the humorous approach? Hannah told Buzzfeed she learned to not care what people think.
"One day, I looked at myself and felt pretty — it’s like I was looking at myself for the first time," she said. "And I made humour out of it because I don’t really care what people think about me."
With a whirlwind of support from around the world and many big websites covering her story, Hannah's main goal is to now encourage others to express themselves.
"The sooner you speak out, the sooner you get help, and then the sooner you have this happiness and this confidence in yourself," Hannah told CBC.
However, Hannah is now dealing with another kind of discrimination after sharing her story — cultural.
"One man was talking about white-man bullying, how I’m an Indian. There were two other comments saying I’m an Indian and we have it good and stuff like that,” she told CTV News Atlantic in an interview. "This was all started because of my weight and my confidence and it just took a turn into my race. I was like, what? Racism still shocks me because this is 2016."
Yet the young woman is still keeping positive and being seen as a role model, even though she's unsure of the label.
"They said that I'm a role model to them," Battiste told CBC. "It's like, the more I do good, the more people want to do good for themselves too. I don't feel like a role model. I just feel like I'm doing my own thing and people like it."
Also on HuffPost
