One of Rihanna's brand ambassadors for her lingerie company Savage X Fenty opened up about her body acceptance journey after previously struggling with an eating disorder in an interview with Fox News Digital.
Maia N. Douglas is a New York-based plus-size model and currently a brand ambassador for Savage X Fenty, a lingerie brand with values of "fearlessness, confidence and inclusivity." Douglas was also featured on a giant billboard in Times Square for Dove in September.
The model said that she jumped from property management to content creation on TikTok and Instagram during COVID. She currently has around 200K followers across platforms and her videos on body acceptance have reached millions. Modeling was always something she wanted to do, but she didn't feel it was in the cards for her.
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"I don't fit a lot of checkboxes that naturally make me a person you would bet on," she said. "I had a lot of things stacked up against me. I'm plus-size. I'm an African American girl… And I had to really get over that fear of rejection and being told no and just accept the fact that… I will get a thousand noes. But if I keep saying yes, one day I'll meet someone who's going to say yes back. And then that's how opportunities happen."
Douglas said some castings left her in tears, and she felt they would suggest in a backhanded way that she needed to lose weight.
"I had someone say, 'You're way too big to be doing this. You're just not the right look. No one will want to work with you.' And I was just like, 'Okay, I appreciate you saying that. It hurts, but I don't believe that. And I know there's a space for me because there's a space for everyone.'"
On one occasion, as Douglas was being measured, she said the casting director told her, "I knew you're busty, but I didn't know you look like this. So I don't really know what we can do with you… I don't think anyone wants to work with you. You're not that marketable.'"
Douglas said that she had sent in all her photos and measurements beforehand, and that they had pursued her for a year. "They knew everything. They had seen me for a year. Like I present very well online what I look like."
"It was probably one of the worst experiences I've ever had with an agency in my life," she added.
Douglas said she has been "a bigger girl" since she was 11, and struggled with disordered eating patterns – including bulimia – until her college years. She attributed the eating disorder to some of the mainstream media's presentation of what an ideal woman looked like.
"I developed an eating disorder very early… at age 11, which is kind of crazy to think about," she said. "There's no reason why an 11-year-old girl should ever be dealing with something so massive."
Douglas went to therapy, got support from her friends and started reframing the internal voice that told her she wasn't good enough.
"I talked to myself and just nurtured myself and tried to remove that shame," she said.
"Even though I'm in a fat body, it doesn't mean that I can't have those same internalized values because I was raised in an extremely fatphobic society. So it's constantly unlearning and setting boundaries and respecting others' boundaries," she said. "One thing I could not imagine is another 11-year-old having an eating disorder because she hates her body. It just boggles my mind. So I would hope that I can continue to navigate my career in a way where it's not only beneficial to me, but it's also giving back and hopefully helping more young girls and women feel more comfortable with themselves."
Now, Douglas has learned to accept herself as a person with a "fat body."
"For me personally, fat is not a dirty word," she said. In fact, Douglas now believes not only in fat acceptance but celebrating fat bodies as part of her "self-love" journey.
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"When it comes to, like, the term body acceptance … I don't believe that that's the goal… After you're grieving something, you have acceptance… It's like a tolerance…. But I feel like after accepting it, there should be a celebration. Like, you should be able to celebrate your body. So now I try to practice body celebration," she said.
Douglas' online presence has also courted criticism and hateful comments that she was "promoting obesity."
To that, she responded, "The only thing about me that I guess would be considered promoting obesity is my body. But I'm vegan. I literally studied nutrition in college. I exercise at least 4 to 5 times a week. I talk about mental health and wellness and all of these things on my page."
She said the issue is that the haters just don't like "fat bodies."
She said the critics were "not really concerned about obesity or about health at all… Health is never really [the] issue for people who just don't like fat bodies. Because if you talked to my doctor today, and they said, 'She's good to go.' It wouldn't change anything for you. The entire issue is that, esthetically, I'm not what you like."
As for how she deals with the mean comments, she said no one can speak to her more harshly than her own internal voice once did.
"There is nothing you can say to me that I have not said [to myself] that was probably worse than what you said. So, it doesn't affect me."
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"I love myself a lot now… But the one thing I will say that I have a problem dealing with is the fact that people feel so comfortable being really, really hateful, like death threats, hateful in comments or in messages. And I feel like wishing that on anyone is really disgusting. I could never imagine just not liking someone because of the way that they look, to want them to not exist anymore."
Savage X Fenty was contacted for comment and did not immediately respond.
