Author and activist Chidera Eggerue is on a mission to challenge the way society views saggy boobs - and that's just the beginning.
Calling herself 'The Slumflower', Eggerue, who earlier this year graced the TEDx stage, has built herself a strong social media following by instigating and facilitating challenging discussions on a variety of subjects impacting women, including body image, the journey to success, and feeling displaced in society.
Now the 23-year-old from South London is offering an antidote to the self-help genre, with her latest book What a time to be alone released in Australia next week.
Speaking to The Guardian, Eggerue reflected on why she first started the #SaggyBoobsMatter hashtag.
“At the time, it was only small-boobed women who were ‘allowed’ to not wear a bra – because there wasn’t much to judge,” she said.
She added: “People would say: ‘You’re jiggling too much. I can see your nipples. This is bad. Cover yourself up.’ I couldn’t understand why.
"Every time I asked somebody, the answer was: ‘Because you’re a girl. Because you’re a woman.’ I knew that wasn’t really an acceptable answer. I had to challenge it.”
It was then that Eggerue decided to start her own fashion and street style blog, The Slumflower - an alternative, she says, to the “mainly white and middle-class” fashion blogs she'd found.
“I couldn’t relate to them so I decided: I’m going to start a blog, and it’s going to be conversational, about fashion and bodies, but also just about feeling more confident, especially as a black girl,” Eggerue said.
The blog took off, with the social media hashtag #SaggyBoobsMatter gaining momentum alongside it.
There are now over 4,000 selfies on Instagram under the tag, posted by women celebrating their bodies of all shapes and sizes.
