Body Positive Hashtag Will Inspire You to Embrace ‘the Shake’ and Dance It Out

Body positive bloggers are rallying around a new hashtag that combines activism with pure fun. The campaign is called #DontHateTheShake, and all you need to do to participate is dance it out on camera.

Started by Melissa Gibson, aka popular body positive blogger @yourstruelymelly, the hashtag is a reminder that dancing is much more important than any jiggling your dance moves may or may not cause. Browse the hashtag to see women in their happy place — dancing alone in their rooms. Some have chosen to bust a move in their skivvies, embracing the beauty of “the shake” for hundreds of thousands of fans to see across social media.

Gibson posted her first video “to have fun in my own body,” she tells Yahoo Beauty. “When I posted my first #DontHateTheShake video, I did it to challenge myself. I wanted to show the world not only the posed and still picture of me, but I also wanted to celebrate and destigmatize how it looked when my body moved.” She started out simply wanting to document her own experience, but the response was so great that she started #DontHateTheShake to gather all the people who wanted to share their own.

She created a separate Instagram account to repost the videos. It’s already garnered over 21,000 followers. “It’s so amazing to see what it has become and how each person makes it their own,” says Gibson.

For Gibson — and the hundreds of other fans who’ve posted their own videos — the campaign is an opportunity to let light in on a negative self-image. “#DontHateTheShake is all about celebrating our bodies in motion and connecting with ourselves and each other in a movement that seeks to see the positives in our bodies instead of dwelling in the negative,” she says. The message has clearly resonated with men and women who are dancing in everything from outerwear to undies, alone and with friends, to every type of music.

“In our own way, #DontHateTheShake is challenging stereotypes and how the world views bodies and taking the focus from how they look to how they move and what bodies can do and the joy that they bring us,” says Gibson. That message of hope would be enough, but the bonus is also pretty sweet: #DontHateTheShake encourages people to embrace their dancing just as much as their bodies. “My dancing sucks but I danced anyways,” wrote one shaker.

Now that’s a perfect motto.

Read more from Yahoo Style + Beauty:

• Model’s Photo Highlights the Problem With 1 Popular Body Type

• This Blogger Had the Best Response to Body-Shaming Comments on Her Instagram

• How a Body Positive Blogger Stopped Trolls in Their Tracks With 1 Bikini Pic

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