My brain, despite myself, craves images of women who look like me succeeding, being liked and meaningful in the zeitgeist. Even though I wake up every morning and prove to myself and everyone around me that I am successful, that I am badass, that I am beautiful, and that beautiful is a shit metric anyway, my lizard brain is STARVING for it.

And I’m just a cis white lady who is a lil’ chubbier than people might think is healthy or acceptable. Honestly, I am reflected in the media a whole lot in comparison to other people. I just can’t shop at The Gap.

It feels phenomenal in a way I can’t explain, like the relief of sneezing or letting out a huge fart, to see someone who looks like me being liked.

Because when you see someone like you being celebrated, you get a modicum more confidence that other people see you as being worth celebrating. There are studies that show people have more favorable attitudes, for instance, to fat people when they see more of them being celebrated in media.

And for me, that translates to being less afraid people are going to raise their eyebrows when I eat cake, or doctors are going to ignore me.

And for a lot of other people it is so much bigger than that. Visbility is about acceptance, but it’s also about safety. That’s important. That’s huge.

Representation matters, and all of us who work in the media have some tiny or enormous power to give that to people. That’s a big responsibility. As time passes, I think we do a better and better job earning it. But we have a long long long way to go.

Those of us who have jobs that any way influence what people see, if you work in advertising, if you produce TV, if you just write short stories you share with your friends, we are in the business of visibility. In a big or small way, we have the power to help people be seen. And to me, that is incredibly important.