Marina Llorca She has been passionate about fashion since she was a child. She always wanted to enter that world that allows you to express yourself through clothes, but for many years I felt like I didn’t fit into the canons of the industry.. She was tired of feeling inferior, and after many years of inner work to love herself, she began to use the networks to defend the variety of bodies and defend the movement. body positive.

Some of his publications such as those in the series #MarinaImitandoXL, in which she posed like thin celebrities to show that it doesn’t matter whether you are a size S or an XL, went viral and her name was increasingly recognized. Four years later, Marina is a movement reference body positivehas accumulated more than 200,000 followers on Instagram and has taken that activism for self-love to her first book The art of loving yourself (Martínez Roca, 2022).

In it, Marina tells her own experience towards self-acceptance, but also shares the stories of followers and provides exercises and advice so that each reader does his or her own work of introspection.

“I wanted the reader, as the chapters progress and pass, to also get involved. Each one is focused on a theme and I wanted them to get involved, to make them think, review and get involved. I think that makes the book very interactive and personal for each person, because each one will read it and draw different conclusions,” he explains to MagasIN.

Years of work

The influencer Marbella, who studied graphic design and then specialized in fashion, also clarifies that loving yourself is a long process and “not something that is achieved overnight.”

In his case, it had been many years self-conscious about her body and low self-esteempartly because of bullying that she suffered from a boy when she was little. All of this ended up leading to problems with food, although at first he was not aware of how he was mistreated.

“Anything that happened in my life, I paid for it with my body, with what I ate, with my physique; but for me it was something normal. As time went by, when things began to get worse and with professional help , evidently that’s when I realized I had a problem.”

In addition to her personal experiences, Marina also attributes this behavior to the impossible standards and the normalization that we had in the 90s and early 2000s, things like extreme diets. “At that time it was super normal to say ‘Oh, well, I don’t eat’ or ‘Victoria’s Secret models are only drinking liquids for 10 days to look wonderful at the parade’. “We have come to normalize certain behaviors so much that they no longer seemed strange.”

“When I finished my degree it was like, what do I do with my life now? It was a bit of catharsis and saying: there are a lot of things to solve. I went to New York, I completely turned everything around and started from scratch. I started reviewing everything about how I treated myself. and it has been a job for years, obviously.”

He went through moments of ups and downs and, in 2018, when he already felt mentally stronger, he began to use the networks as “a speaker in which I can make these issues visible.”

“Promotes obesity”

Like any influencerMarina has thousands of followers who identify with her experiences, but also many haterswhich attack your body or They criticize that it “promotes obesity”.

“I receive these types of comments every day, but the truth is that I am already in politics from scratch. I mean, Instagram is my home and no one is going to come to my house to touch my morals. So, I have made the decision that any person who comes to insult, disrespect or mess with other people, because there are also many who take the opportunity to mess with followers in comments, automatically lock on and off. That is the policy that I have fully established in my account.”

And to those haters reminds them that “people live in all sizes and shapes. That a person exists does not promote anythingthat a person dances does not promote anything. Do we say the same thing to a thin person? Are we telling him that he is promoting anorexia? It’s stupid”.

Fashion and Atria

During this time, Marina has managed to work in what she always wanted: fashion. At first she started behind the camera, a victim partly of her insecurities, but little by little she began to be the one posing as a model. curvy. However, becoming comfortable being herself in this industry that has always promoted specific body types was not an easy path.

“I loved the world of fashion, but at the same time I kind of I was aware that I was never going to fit in because I didn’t look like the girls in the magazines.. Therefore, I wanted to be like the models of Vogue, be just as thin and look like them. I managed to lose almost 20 kilos and reach a size 38, what happened is that now my weight fluctuated a lot because I had eating problems all the time. Also, for me, being a 38 was not enough, I had to be thinner, I had to lose more,” she says.

Thanks to the change generated by movement body positivenow there are more opportunities for models curvy and Marina says that she works with a multitude of brands. “I am super happy with my body. I feel comfortable with it, I lead a healthy life in the sense that if one day I want to eat what I want, I eat it because I have the right, and if one day I want to eat healthier I do it; anyway If I want to play sports I do it. But all of this without living with that cross on top of always having to be perfect and want to lose more weight.

Despite the progress in recent years, Marina affirms that there is still much to do and too many “brands of hypocrisy” that make their campaigns with models curvy, but then they don’t have sizes for those women in their collections. Therefore, in her fight to make fashion more inclusive and reflect the diversity of women’s bodies, Marina has co-founded the Atria brandwhich presented its first collection a few weeks ago.

“We have started with an inclusive swimwear collection and our campaign is with models of all body types. We work from a size 32-34 to a size 50-52. We launched it a few days ago and we have already sold out practically everything,” she says proudly.

Marina explains that one of the most innovative aspects of the brand is that, with this variety of sizes, the designs are the same. That is There is no normal collection and another plus size collection.

“The concept of our brand is that everyone can wear the same. It’s something that we were clear about from minute one. The model is the same for size 34 as for size 50. Obviously, the pattern increases, reinforcements are added… But the design is the same. The goal is for everyone to be able to wear the same thing, no matter what size they are. “I see the absurdity of making distinctions between coat racks for standard sizes and for large sizes.”

Marina affirms that, if they have been able to create this variety of sizes, anyone can, and encourages big brands to “get their act together.” “If there are other brands that do not work on this issue, what you are telling me is that maybe there is some fatphobia, because they obviously have the resources.”

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