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"  Brooke Birmingham, a popular twentysomething blogger from Illinois whose 172-pound weight loss journey via Weight Watchers has inspired many, is taking on Shape magazine for refusing to let her expose her stomach on their site after they saw her bikini shot (via XOJane).   Birmingham was contacted by a freelancer for Shape who wanted to profile her for the success story section of the website and requested a bikini &amp;quot;after&amp;quot; photo as per their usual featured success stories. Birmingham sent the following picture:    A few days later, the writer contacted Birmingham again and told her that while she looked &amp;quot;ah-mazing,&amp;quot; the editors wanted another photo of her with a shirt, because bikini shots weren&amp;#039;t editorial policy. Birmingham looked at other featured success stories \u2014 some of them did include a bikini &amp;quot;after&amp;quot; shot.   Birmingham, cordial but clearly and understandably angry, exchanged a few more emails with the writer, who said that she was simply the middleman and couldn&amp;#039;t do anything. Birmingham chose to pull her story from the site and wrote about the decision on her own blog.   &amp;quot;I told [the writer] that the exposure wasn&amp;#039;t worth it to me, that I&amp;#039;m an honest person and I didn&amp;#039;t feel like the story was letting me be honest if I couldn&amp;#039;t share that photo. [...] This is the type of body they should have featured because it can give people hope. Hope that they can lose weight healthfully and even if they don&amp;#039;t end up with airbrushed abs of steel, they&amp;#039;re gorgeous and shouldn&amp;#039;t be ashamed of whatever imperfection they believe they have. [...] I spent MANY years hating and hiding a body I was ashamed of because it wasn&amp;#039;t society&amp;#039;s ideal of beautiful. Being asked to send a photo of myself with a shirt on made me feel like I again should be ashamed of my body. That since I have the loose skin, I shouldn&amp;#039;t be in a bikini.&amp;quot;   A rep from Shape commented:   This is a result of a misunderstanding with a freelance writer. This does not represent Shape&amp;#039;s editorial values and the comments made about Shape&amp;#039;s &amp;#039;editorial policy&amp;#039; are absolutely untrue. Shape prides itself on empowering and celebrating women like Brooke, and any indication that we would not run the piece with the photo provided was wrong, as we would have been proud to share her inspirational story.  RELATED:  Weight Loss Photo That Sparked Controversy Will Appear in Magazine 16 Real, Beautiful Women in Every Stage of Pregnancy (NSFW)   Follow Anna on Twitter.   Photo Credit: Getty "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/health-fitness/news/a6705/brooke-birmingham-shape/>