Why the world is talking about Padma Lakshmi's photo

The Top Chef host, who has earlier embraced her scars and her weight fluctuations, now flaunts her stretch marks.

Padma Lakshmi is the poster girl the body positive movement needs.

She is staring 50 in the face.

Her body has faced the rigours of motherhood.

It has also felt the impact of piling on weight during Top Chef (which she hosts), losing it all, gaining it all back in the next season, and repeating it year after year.

But none of that stopped Padma Lakshmi from proudly showing off her stretch marks in a recent Instagram stories pic.

This photo is Padma Lakshmi's latest attempt to discourage body shaming.

She has famously refused to cover up the long scar on her arm, which was the result of a car accident.

Earlier this year she took it a step further, revealing in an essay for The Hollywood Reporter that she was getting off the size-zero-obsessed bandwagon.

'I can't block my child from reality and the culture that we live in,' she had written. 'But I have a responsibility to make sure that she has a healthy self-image and a normal childhood. I don't want her to ever be ashamed of her body. I want her to cultivate her mind.'

She had even shared a 'thick happy' photo of herself on Instagram to get the message across.

Padma Lakshmi is not the first celebrity to embrace her stretch marks, but she has just given the movement a much-needed boost.