This week has been an eye-opener for me.
The craft beer community for me has always been a safe space to be myself. To wear make up or not. To dress up or to wear track pants. To be my full, pansexual, 4 foot 11, and slightly weird self. To meet friends and to share my love of beer without sexism, racism, agism, and other discriminations we have all encountered in other aspects of our lives. And for the most part, the acceptance and love I feel is like nothing I have ever experienced before in a hobby.
And even though I do feel free to be me, I do take my profile on Instagram very seriously. Before I post a picture or write something to put out into the world, I think very critically about what I am about to say with my words and my image. The lifestyle I try to live, and inspire others to as well, is to enjoy everything I do and do everything I enjoy while being myself and loving myself just the way I am. This is what I want to share in my online image. I think it is important to think twice before my posts. I critically look at each image and ask myself: what does this say about me and my life? Is this post positively supporting the message I am trying to send?
When my image was brought to question by someone I thought was a beer friend this week, I was taken aback. The image is me holding a beer can and a glass of beer, like many of my images, but the difference was I was in a pool and in a bikini (yes I am talking about the picture to the right). It is not "sexy". I have a messy bun, no make up, sunglasses on, no cleavage, no seductive pose, and you can't even see my bottom half. But someone put into question what I was saying with my image. They said that I admitted to judging other women who post sexual images on their Instagram accounts, and here I am posting one myself.
First and foremost I want to say this: never would I take away a women's freedom to share her body visually if she chooses. Everyone is beautiful, I promote and believe STRONGLY in body positivity and being happy in your own skin. The beer industry (not so much in Ontario Craft Beer, but unfortunately even the best of the best fall to temptation sometimes) is full of suggestive and over sexualized images of women and I strive to avoid anything close to that in my feed. But that is a personal choice, I take my account seriously and treat it like a professional (but completely independent) account and professionally, that is not the image I am looking to put out into the world.
Secondly, all I am asking everyone to do (especially women in this positively changing, but still slightly sexist industry and world) is to think carefully about the images you post of yourself. Unfortunately, there are negative and judgemental people out there and unfortunately, we are not at a time in our society where we can freely post our naked bodies without scrutiny. To put this into perspective: it is still in question a lot of the time whether mother's can breast feed in public. Just, please, think about the images you are putting out there, that is all MY opinion is, and that I believe is what was being called into question.
Thirdly, yes I am a smaller woman both in height and weight, yes I am proud of my body that I work hard to maintain at the gym so I can drink all the beers, eat all the ice cream, and play with all the nieces and nephews in my life and still stay healthy and happy. If I want to wear a bikini in my pool, I damn well will. And if you don't think that is appropriate, then look away. Just like if I don't like what you post, promote, or support, I do not follow you. I do not believe in negative public comments or publicly humiliating anyone no matter how much I disagree with what is portrayed or said.
Lastly, I want to thank all of the beautiful people who reached out and shared their stories with me this week. I want to thank my boss Andrea Chiodo for standing up with me for what we believe in and giving me confidence this week. I also want to thank all of the men who reached out to me to support me. It is hard being a male feminist and standing up for equality when so many of our friends or family members are oblivious and refuse to acknowledge the problems that are still effecting our wives, sisters, mothers, and daughters every single day. And to the women. All of you who told me you have had similar experiences, or worse... to you I say this: you are a beautiful (beer) goddess. You wear your bikinis and post your cute (beer) selfies and don't let ANYONE tell you what you can wear or how you should look. Think about what you post, but post what you want! Be yourself and stand up for yourself. In the words of Megan, the brewing craft beer goddess of Modern Times (@isbeeracarb on Instagram), #MakeCraftBeerFunAgain.