Actress, singer, and plus-sized model Nzinga Imani is proud to be showing off her body and sharing positivity on social media despite facing adversity from people body-shaming her.
In an interview with xoNecole, the Guyanese-American actress spoke about having faced backlash for showing off her body and even talked out about TikTok flagging her videos because of it. She said despite this, she remains with her head high and spreads body positivity.
When she auditioned for her role in All The Queen’s Men, she was set to take part in a scene where she would be naked. She was asked how she felt about it knowing that she would be one of few plus-sized women on television playing a nude scene.
“I absolutely knew that it was going to be a game-changer. I know, for myself, seeing all these shows and seeing how there’s more and more nude scenes on television, a lot of the times, it’s the stereotypical body that they show.”
“It’s the perfectly flat stomachs and the perfectly proportioned women, and you don’t see a lot of typical body types because 67% of women in the U.S. are plus-sized. But when we show that in the media, it’s not reflective of what the reality is. You just see a bunch of what they consider perfect-type bodies on screen,” she added.
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Imani said, “I had seen someone who was just barely plus-sized before in a sex scene, and I knew how much that meant to me to see her even though she doesn’t really represent me or my culture, and she didn’t look like me. Just the fact that she wasn’t the stereotypical body type, it meant a lot to me.”
“So, I was excited to be that for someone else, and I’ve been receiving so many messages about what that meant to other women. To see me, 3XL body out there on TV and how they felt represented and seen—it was a big reason why I felt comfortable to do it and felt like it was something I could do and be proud of doing,” she continued.
She was also asked what body positivity meant to her, to which she said, “To me, body positivity is just loving yourself where you are right now. It doesn’t mean that you can’t be working toward a different body goal, or you can’t be disciplined. “
“[It also means] not letting other people’s opinions or biases affect the way you move throughout the world because there’s always going to be people who look down on you or have something to say, but if you can stand up tall with your chest out and really defend yourself and not let their negative comments affect you, I feel like that’s what the whole body positivity movement is about—having that community to back you up, so you know you’re not alone,” she added.
Imani said that her key to being successful in the face of controversy is her authenticity and keeping it real with herself and fans.
