It’s Time to Trash Body Positivity
Are all women beautiful? It doesn’t matter.
For some time, women have been told to love their physical imperfections in part as a protest against ubiquitous, unrealistic beauty standards. It’s a keen sociological theory, but practically, body positivity is useless as a mechanism for social change and damaging to The Woman, who must continuously gaslight herself. The feedback that she receives from the world-at-large is not at all connected to the messages she must tell herself. And why must she engage in this constant battle against the reality of her position? Because body positivity is fundamentally and wholly linked to beauty, which is an unworthy candidate for our time and attention.
Let’s first thoroughly dispel the myth that body positivity will in any way influence others. One of the promises of self-love advocates, or at least of clickbait, is that women who embrace their bodies are “Changing how we look at feminine beauty,” but that simply isn’t true because it can’t be true. Women are not the ones who define beauty — in fact, no one group can influence or even anticipate what will change society’s perception of the ideal woman. Our fate is left up to the icons and influencers who society clings to for one reason or another, whether that’s Twiggy’s thin frame or Kylie Jenner’s plump lips. Preferences are wonky and temperamental. They begin with Coco Chanel emerging after vacation as a bronzed Goddess and end when Tan Mom reverts tanning into a blue-collar sideshow. Beauty comes and goes through caprice; it cannot be strategized.
Our adherence to high-waisted shorts proves that as much as we love something, we cannot wear it into favor for those who have an ideal feminine image in mind. We cannot love our flawed bodies into popularity. Our acceptance does not equal their acceptance. Through our campaign to value every hair, stretch mark or poufy bit of flesh, we have made women feel that they are twice failures. Once for lying outside the idealized version of beauty and once more for feeling negatively about their bodily shortcomings. There is a tyranny in silencing women whose realities do not lend well to the presiding feminist narrative.
Beyond the fact that body positivity has proven to be ineffective in redefining beauty, it’s also a complete diversion for feminists and our ideologies. We’re still responding to a conversation we don’t like instead of creating one that we do. When they said, “This face and this body are beautiful,” we responded with, “No, several of these types of faces and bodies are beautiful.” Why did we keep the conversation centered on beauty — which is a subjective, dynamic and nebulous subject — instead of shifting people’s attention to something we’d rather talk about instead? Why do we engage with mean people who are dying to tell us why we’re ugly instead of saying, “Cool opinion, broseph,” and moving onto more important things? We are complicit in keeping a woman’s appearance front and center, regardless of the progressiveness of our stance.
But mostly, and this is the big one, it doesn’t matter if a woman is beautiful or not. Sure, there are the studies that show an attractive man or woman will earn more from their beauty, but I’m talking about something bigger than that. In the grand scheme of things, when you’re lying on your deathbed, does it matter if you’re beautiful? Can you still find love while ugly as a fence post? Can you sing wonderfully or write convincingly or make people laugh even if some find you unpleasant in shape or style? Are you kind? Will people trust you with their secrets? Do you have a skill? Do you volunteer? Of the millions of the things that you can or cannot be, that you can change within your life and touch with your singular you-ness, why in the world does it matter if you’re pretty?
I invite you to give up trying to love your flaws. Instead, why not simply steer your mind and soul away from the body altogether? Not its signals, that tell you if you are healthy and functioning and not its strengths that carry you from place to place, but the parts of you that don’t matter. You can hate or love your cellulite, as long as you don’t dwell on it. If you’re obsessing about your size in the dressing room or acne scars in the violent light of midday, let the feeling move over you like a shower and then focus on literally nine million other useful topics that could desperately use your brainpower. Do not flog yourself for feeling badly and do not congratulate yourself for evolving. Simply take your perceptions about your body and move it further and further from the front of your mind until its size matches its insignificance.
Body positivity is not only ineffective and contrary to the feminine agenda, it’s also unfair to individual women, who can’t possibly ignore the images they see and messages they take in. It’s time we give up on body positivity and take up brain positivity. We cannot deny the reality of our differentness or the places we fall short, but we can move past it to focus on what truly makes us great, redirecting society’s attention and making ourselves feel better in the process.
