Hilary Duff was thirteen when the world started commenting on her body.
She was the star of Lizzie McGuire, the girl everyone wanted as a friend, and yet the comments kept coming: that she was overweight, that her arms, that she needed to take better care of herself. She later said it herself: she grew up believing those criticisms, even though she had the normal body of any teenage girl.
More than twenty years have passed.
Today Hilary is 38 and the mother of four: Luca, Banks, Mae and Townes. And recently she appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit, something that had never happened to her before.
She said that at first she felt afraid. She thought she had to get in shape in a demanding way, because she is not a model and because she had carried four pregnancies. But then she understood something else, something she might have liked to hear at seventeen: that her body worked very hard to bring her family into the world.
The same woman who was singled out for a few extra pounds is now applauded for a body that gave birth four times. And she knows it: that is why she said she hopes for the day when no size needs an explanation.
Sometimes time does not change the body. It changes the way we learn to look at it.