BODY POSITIVITY
Body Positivity is a social movement which challenges the suffocating societal messages of constantly criticizing our own body in order to achieve a ‘perfect’ body figure, which will make us ‘attractive’ and be ‘worthy of respect’ by social standards. This movement is unique to everyone. Overall, it is inclusive but not limited to appreciating our body in spite of flaws, feeling confident about our body and accepting our body’s shape and size. Body positivity is against both fat and thin shaming because body-shaming in all its forms can lead to mental health problems and harmful eating disorders. Before we dive deep into the misconceptions people harbour for this incredibly uplifting movement, let us first take a brief look at the foundation of this movement and furthermore glance at some of the statistics which reinforce that this movement is the need of the hour.
The oldest roots of body positivity reach back to the Victorian Dress Reform movement, where women advocated for the acceptance of women’s bodies and discouraged women from using extreme corsets or body mutilation to fit the standard of an extremely petite waist or an hourglass figure. In fact, these women also had to argue for their right to wear pants, which just shows the extremity of judgement and scrutiny that women have always had to face, just to look ‘presentable’. Then came the fat acceptance movement of the late 1960s, which led to the establishment of The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. Lew Louderback pushed this movement into existence by publishing an essay, ‘More People Should Be Fat’, which highlighted the prejudice faced by fat people in workplaces and even advocated for “plump” models to appear in magazines. The body positivity movement in its current form began to emerge around 2012, initially focusing on challenging unrealistic feminine beauty standards. As the movement grew in popularity, the original focus on acceptance of weight began to shift toward a message that “all bodies are beautiful.”
Some concerning evidence of the ill-effects of commenting and hyper-policing of bodies are as follows:-
- A study found that even brief exposure to media messages portraying an “ideal physique” was linked to increased body image concerns and increased eating disorder symptoms.
- Even young children may suffer from body dysmorphia. A survey found that more than 50% of girls and nearly 33% of boys between the ages of 6 and 8 felt that their ideal body weight was less than their current weight.
- The above study also revealed that 25% of kids had tried some type of dieting behaviour by the age of seven, which is extremely disturbing.
As we can clearly see, the mindset of having “desirable” bodies are extremely detrimental to adults as well as young children. However, there is still constant criticism, mostly towards messages of fat people loving and displaying their bodies, under the guise of health concerns.
Most critics dismiss the Body Positivity movement stating that this movement is actually harmful as it glosses over health problems. The fact is that fat stigma is so ingrained in the minds of people that we instantly connect fatness to ill health, thus failing to regard the many other aspects of a person’s life that also have an effect on their bodies and health. Modern culture allows and even glamorizes excessive drinking, smoking and those who constantly work under stress and pressure.
However, the moment a fat person is public about how positive or comfortable they feel about their body, health concerns are suddenly developed. Such selective concern directed only towards fat people is proof that people criticize and comment on fat people just because they don’t adhere to society’s beauty standards.
Just because a person is overweight or underweight does not mean that they do not practice good health habits. Forcing such people to fit ‘slimmer / muscular’ beauty standards is not equivalent to caring about their health. A person’s health issues are their own and fatness/thinness or illness does not translate to others having the freedom to comment on their bodies and not respecting them. People feel that complimenting someone on losing weight is congratulating them for their dedication and hard work. However, the causes of weight loss may not be so “healthy”. Disordered eating, unhealthy exercise habits, obsessive weight checking, illness, grief or depression are some of the many reasons that may lead to weight loss. We may never know the story behind someone’s body or its changes and therefore we have no right to comment on them.
An important highly elevating effect that Body Positivity movement has had on people is to soften the harsh perception of our own body. The human psychology bases self-worth heavily on their physical appearance, and how good they perceive themselves to look. This is referred to in the field of psychology as appearance-contingent self-worth and can be highly detrimental to an individual’s body image. This is only beneficial when an individual feels that they look good, but is extremely negative and anxiety-inducing when they do not. This movement recognizes the role psychology plays in our physical and mental well-being as negative body perception leads to depression, disordered eating, body dysmorphic disorder, and more. The movement’s rapid spread has created awareness around these topics that brands and companies do not talk about as they profit from people constantly chasing ‘the perfect body shape’. Multinational beauty and clothing companies have a huge influence on how people perceive themselves and body positive movements are slowly but surely changing these perceptions to be inclusive of all types of bodies.
A huge reason why fat stigma and aggressive diets are promoted is due to medical practitioners exaggerating and misrepresenting the health issues of obesity and being overweight, and using these as a cover for aesthetic and cultural prejudices against fat.
Many Institutes of Health have published studies concluding that “excess body weight during midlife, including overweight, is associated with an increased risk of death.” This, however, has been rebuked by many scholarly books. J Eric Oliver, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, stated that “a relatively small group of scientists and doctors, many directly funded by the weight-loss industry, have created an arbitrary and unscientific definition of overweight and obesity. They have inflated claims and distorted statistics on the consequences of our growing weights, and they have largely ignored the complicated health realities associated with being fat.” Paul F Campos, a professor of law at the University of Colorado at Boulder, states that “health authorities are giving people advice — to maintain a body mass index in the ‘healthy weight’ range — that is literally impossible for many of them to follow”, owing to the fact that genetic differences account for 50 to 80 per cent of the variation in fatness within a population.
Complimenting someone on their weight loss reinforces the idea that their thinner “after” body is better and their fatter “before” body is worse. We make every fat person feel like their body is also a “before”, which leads to them hating their body and forcing them to adopt unhealthy habits such as extreme dieting, dietary pills, etc. People have to stop the obsessional mentality that slim bodies are the only expected way to present oneself. A person’s worth is much, much more than just what they weigh or look like. Also, during the ongoing times of isolation and social distancing, it is easy to lose track or maintain a certain routine which we may have in place. Owing to this, our body may go through some changes and it is natural. Making memes or joking about weight gain just strengthens the rampant fatphobia across the world and will lead to people taking harsh steps to keep their weight in check. We cannot and must not blame our body for changing during this time.
