U.K. artist Jody Steel’s twisted body image video goes viral

Facbook/Jody Steel

Body image can be a gut-wrenching thing – and that’s exactly what artist Jody Steel is trying to convey in her latest project “Body Image.”

In a time lapse video posted to Facebook, Steel uses her body as a canvas, first painting on a smaller stomach, and then twisting it tighter and tighter into a painful-looking knot.

“There have been times I’ve look [sic] in a mirror and wished for a perfect figure,“ she wrote in a comment on the video. "Once I realized that naturally, I don’t have a Coke bottle figure, or long and thin legs, I began to let go of the pressures I’ve felt to fulfill an image that our society has deemed the pinnacle of beauty.”

And that seems to be resonating with people in a big way. Within 24 hours of being posted, the video had already been viewed more than 30 million times, with 350,000 shares.

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“‘Perfect figure’ doesn’t exist,” wrote one commenter. “I have always been thin (high metabolism) I have been called anorexic, sick looking, like I need a cheeseburger, and even a junkie. I have spent most of my life wishing that I could gain weight. Even after my 4th child I couldn’t keep weight on, it sucks. Grass is always greener on the other side.”

“I am a size 18/20 and I get the opposite. I have a figure, I don’t have a huge stomach but I’m still looked at as unhealthy. While I appreciate the momentum the plus sized industry has gained, I do not agree with some of their campaigns. ‘Plus is a REAL woman’ skinny girls aren’t the normal woman, skinny girls look anorexic,” another wrote. “I know plenty of women who eat more in one meal than I could in a day and they are super slim. My mother was one of them.
We need to embrace EVERY WOMAN FOR THE SIZE SHE IS!”

Steel also wrote back to concerned commenters on Facebook.

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“For those who’ve implied that I’m saying you shouldn’t still strive for being healthy, that’s not true at all. I do still work towards goals, but not towards body image goals that are unrealistic for my body type,” she wrote. “I’ll never be able to have model long legs or large breasts genetically. But I’ve set realistic goals for myself and that’s the point. I eat food that makes me happy and go to the gym a healthy amount. There’s a balance. “

This isn’t the first time Steel’s art has gone viral. Her unique work, from a portrait of Walter White to Deadpool, is all done with the human body as her medium.

“I didn’t want to draw all over my notes,” she told Business Insider this past September. “So the next available canvas was me.”