Keeping it Together: Just wear the bikini

Happy Memorial Day Weekend! It's Hannah Yasharoff, wellness and celebrity culture reporter for Paste BN.

This weekend marks the unofficial start to the summer season (bring on the beach trips, pool parties and outdoor happy hours). But for many, it's also a time of increased anxiety around clothing items that show off more arms, legs and stomachs than winter clothes.

I wrote about the growing movement of plus-size influencers throwing out old ways of thinking that their bodies need to be covered up, and instead dressing to celebrate their bodies.

Meet Raffela Mancuso, an activist and content creator, who frequently posts about body image and mental health and recently shared images of herself wearing a gifted bikini from Kim Kardashian's shapewear brand Skims. And there's Mayra Mejia, who founded Plush DMV, a Washington, D.C.-area "inclusive, safe space for fat folks to meet, have fun and make friends," because she was able to find online communities for plus-size people but real life was still more isolating.

"Whenever I would go out, I wouldn't see people that looked like me," Mejia told me. "I had a couple of plus-size friends that were afraid to go our or meet new people or try new experiences because there's a certain judgment for people that are plus-size. I wanted people to feel more in community with each other."

You can read more about the summer of plus-size pool parties here, and continue scrolling for more top reads from our wellness section from this week!