The holiday season is supposed to be a time for joy, celebration, and connection—but what we talk about less is how it can also be a minefield of insecurities.
Be it the snugness of last year’s party dress or the looming pressure to make resolutions, the cultural obsession with bodies—particularly smaller ones—seems to reach a fever pitch this time of year. It’s a feeling Josie Balka knows all too well.
The spoken word poet shares messages of self-worth with hundreds of thousands online, building a platform rooted in getting honest and vulnerable about body image. Her work resonates because it doesn’t offer platitudes. Instead, she embraces the messiness of learning to accept ourselves.
As the holidays approach, we’re quieting that little voice in our heads that judges every indulgence and replacing it, instead, with Josie’s soothing words of affirmation. We recently sat down with Josie to talk about her creative journey, the return of early 2000s diet culture, and navigating body acceptance over the holidays.
Finding Solidarity in Shared Struggles
During a season that often demands perfection, finding moments of connection can be grounding. Sharing how you feel, even in small ways, can take the edge off and remind you that you’re not the only one navigating complicated feelings.
“I think my personal journey with body image is one of my greatest points of inspiration for writing because it’s so isolating but so universal all at once,” she shares. "It’s the kind of thing you think you’re alone in until you say it out loud and find a room full of women saying, ‘I think about that too.’"
The holidays tend to amplify everything—the joy, the stress, and yes, the pressure to feel like you’ve got it all together. But no matter how personal our struggles feel, they’re rarely something we face alone. “Writing about it has turned one of my largest and loneliest struggles into something a lot less lonely,” she explains. Her words offer a way of finding solidarity—whether at a bustling event or with a close friend—by simply opening up.
Resisting ‘Thin Is in’
If you’ve noticed low-rise jeans and Y2K aesthetics making a comeback, you’ve likely also felt the subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) resurgence of diet culture. The messaging may be quieter now—often disguised as “wellness” or “self-improvement”—but it’s no less pervasive.
Josie observes how these pressures intensify around the holidays, a time when reflection and resolution-setting can turn into self-criticism. “When December rolls around, you start to reflect on the year you’ve had and the goals you set for yourself, and knowing you didn’t reach some of them can be so hard to accept,” she shares. “The holidays can be so hard for this, harder than any other time of year.”
Despite the challenges, Josie reminds herself self-worth isn’t tied to body size. “Worthiness has absolutely nothing to do with weight or what you look like,” she says. “Who you are as a person is the only thing that matters, like, at all.” But she’s also honest about how challenging it can be to offer this advice to herself, which makes us feel like it’s OK to be a work-in-progess—in fact, we all are.
Letting Go of Narratives That Don’t Serve You
Unlearning the stories we’ve been told about our bodies—and the ones we tell ourselves—is almost never a straight path. Like most of us, for Josie, progress has been rewarding but messy.
“Over the years, I have really been able to set myself free of some of the narratives that I used to live by. Like, that I had to workout if I was going to eat or indulge in any way,” she says. It’s not easy work, but letting go of those rigid beliefs has made space for something much more fulfilling. “I do live in a bigger body now than I did before, but I definitely feel a lot more free and more in-the-moment than I ever have before.”
One mantra in particular has stayed with her: “If your body was only like that when you weren’t eating or enjoying your life, then that wasn’t your body.” Like so much of Josie’s work, it’s a powerful reclamation of joy and a call to lean into life’s small pleasures.
Navigating the Pressures of the Season
If diet culture had a season, it’d be this one—where indulgence and self-improvement awkwardly coexist, like mismatched ornaments on the same tree. Even when you’re actively trying to tune it out, the noise can feel deafening. For Josie Balka, though, finding some clarity has come from an unlikely source: her social media feed.
“I follow so many amazing women online, and I cannot even begin to tell you the difference it has made for me to feel at home in the body I have instead of the constant pursuit of the body I want,” she shares. Curating her digital space to feature diverse, body-positive voices has been a game-changer, offering her a much-needed antidote to constant pressures.
Seeing others embrace their bodies—stretch marks, dimples, and all—has been empowering in ways that feel refreshingly real. “Just seeing other women who have bodies like me saying, ‘You are allowed to be this way and it is beautiful,’” Josie explains, has helped her feel less alone in her journey.
And through her poetry, she’s doing her part to keep that energy alive, reminding her audience that it’s okay to shut out the noise and lean into what feels good—for you, not the algorithm.