It's rare when you find someone who is a public figure and a celebrity and who's not only not scared to speak out on controversial issues, but also truly advocates for change, especially protecting our youth from false advertising that promotes body issues.

Jamila Jamil is such a person and on today's podcast we have a brilliant discussion on so many important mental health issues like body dysmorphia, her own more than 20 years struggle with anorexia, the energy draining and joy stealing this focus has, the pressure on women to love to patriarchal standards, the influence of social media on our youth can so much more.

Jamila is a British actress model, activist and BBC radio host, she gained widespread recognition in the TV series The Good Place, and in addition to her acting career, Jamila is known for her body positivity advocacy and campaigns against beauty standards and body shaming.

She co-founded the iWay movement and podcast promoting self-worth beyond physical appearance, which she recently interviewed me on.

Jamila has been an outspoken advocate for inclusivity, mental health awareness and LGBTQ rights and is an actor voice in the fight against online bullying and misinformation.

Let's dive into today's podcast.

Jamila, I am so thrilled and honored and so excited to talk to you again. I had the based, based interview and you interviewed me, it was like I had known you my whole life.

As you said, we're based friends now, it was amazing, you're incredible, you're an inspiration, you're just a wonderful person.

I know you've got all kinds of accolades behind your name, but I just want to say you're amazing, you're a wonderful person and I just see you, you're just wonderful.

Thank you for coming on my podcast.

Thank you, it's an honor, I love your work and I'm thrilled to be here.

Jamila, I love your podcast iWay, it's beautiful and I know you started that as a almost like a social media, it was a social media post.

It was a social media post that, yeah, that became a movement and then now it's kind of grown into content and it's changed shape a lot from when it first started.

From when you first started, it was what was your first start? How did you start? What was your objective when you started?

So when I started it, it was just an angry post because I just joined Instagram and kept on seeing pictures of women, like very successful, very acclaimed women, popping up on my feed with a number written across their body and that number wasn't, you know, I don't know, the usual other nonsense accolades, we give people like how many followers they have or how much money they are worth or how many awards they've won.

But it was somehow even more reductive than that, it was how much they weigh.

And once I'd clicked on one of those posts by mistake, suddenly I was being bombarded with them because the algorithm went oh she's interested in how much the liberties weigh and I realized that oh my god there are all these posts of these women and how much they weigh you can never find a picture of men and how much they weigh if they're not like a UFC fighter.

I was a sort of bodybuilder and I was so mad because it was 20 years since I first developed needing this order and I struggled with one and it almost killed me for two decades and here I was 32 years old looking at the same shit that took me down when I was 11 and I was just so devastated to see that.

So I just wrote on my very small Twitter account at the time, I weigh my contributions to society, I weigh my relationship, I weigh my orgasms, I weigh the body parts that I don't like, I weigh the sum of all of my mother fucking parts.

And it went viral and it really resonated with the people and then people started to send theirs back to me and within a few days I had like 10,000 from around the world and I started an Instagram account thinking it would just be a short fad.

And it turned into a movement and that movement has now lasted for about five years, it has expanded or not away, but it has expanded beyond just being around body image and eating disorders and now is just a mental health movement.

And that's why you and I have cross paths because I want to talk to neuroscientists and I want to talk to anyone I can who has any kind of advice or help for people to have autonomy over their mental health.

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