Not So Radical
The radical self-love movement is not one-size-fits-all.
Story by Isabel Lay
Dear Radical Self-Love,
You are not sustainable.
I finally realize that you are not meant for me. I wholeheartedly reject you.
But of course, I initially followed you. My submission to the body positivity movement was inevitable.
Because I grew up in bright, shiny Los Angeles, my body and how much space it took up was at the forefront of my mind during my formative years.
College helped. Moving up to Bellingham to start classes at Western Washington University was a breath of fresh air, and I slowly began to unfollow Instagram accounts promoting stick-thin women and advertisements for diet teas.
But upon my return to LA for my first summer break, I was plunged back into the suffocating depths of superficial beauty standards.
To combat the seemingly inescapable LA lifestyle, I deleted the Instagram app off my phone and drew back from my high school friends. I fostered my burgeoning love of climbing and worked at a local ice cream shop. When I began my sophomore year, I felt like I was beginning to know myself again.
Over the next couple of years, I found salvation through steady improvement: I moved into my first home, studied abroad, recovered from a few breakups, and most importantly, my parents moved to Portland, Oregon, which secretly gave me the gift of never having to return to Southern California.
The words “body positivity” tasted so foreign in my mouth, but I tried to adjust to the idea of releasing the control I so desperately wanted to claim over my body.
During that time, I also started to connect my own struggle with body dysmorphia to those who were invested in an escalating social media movement called body positivity. I had seen this word plastered across accounts from plus size models that I followed like @barbieferreira and @tessholliday.
The words “body positivity” tasted so foreign in my mouth, but I tried to adjust to the idea of releasing the control I so desperately wanted to claim over my body. When I was losing weight, I was fine, but when I gained any, even just a pound or two, I could barely function until I hatched a plan about how I would lose the “extra” weight. I was constantly body checking and still found myself stuck in that obsessive loop of looking at my body in every possible reflection, racking my brain as to how I could finally see myself objectively.
About a year ago, I was sitting in my therapist’s office, trudging through the same conversation about hating my body, when she introduced me to you, radical self-love. She said the idea was based on the foundation of saying “fuck it” to societal expectations and loving oneself with reckless abandon.
Radical self-love, you gave me a new mentality that seemed great at first, a seemingly perfect fix to an imperfect problem. I loved the idea that I could eat a party-size bag of potato chips and not immediately feel like I needed to shrink inside of myself and never come out.
Gradually, however, I found an error in your philosophy. You gave me permission to feed myself whatever I wanted but also allowed me to pretend that unhealthy eating habits plus no exercise routine somehow provided the best answer for my body, and myself.
Radical self-love, you gave me a new mentality that seemed great at first, a seemingly perfect fix to an imperfect problem.
To complicate matters further, you became so widely embraced that you seemed inescapable. The condemnation of dieting, or merely watching what I ate in any conscious way, became something declared blasphemous by my favorite body-positive Instagram influencers. I remember distinctly seeing your name over and over again flashing across my Instagram feed, reposted by both influencers and friends. I remember seeing a post that declared: “Overeating is completely normal. It is our thoughts, feelings and reactions that have us believing overeating is the problem that we need to get curious about.”
These posts filled my feed and I began to feel suffocated by these ideas that only seemed to make me feel worse.
It’s hard for me to follow your movement — radical self-love — when I don’t see myself in your reflection. I finally realize this might be because the philosophies of your movement aren’t what I actually believe, and I don’t need to feel this pressure to conform to someone else’s standards.
I found a balance that worked for me a few months ago, and while I still slip up all the time, that isn’t something I fret over anymore.
I cook good, healthy food, and I focus on what I put in my body because I love it and it helps me do so many things.
I still eat ice cream and party-size bags of chips sometimes and don’t criticize myself, most of the time.
I still worry about not eating enough vegetables or feeding myself well enough, and sometimes I do limit my carb intake if I’ve only eaten bread all day. On those days when I indulge a little more, I remind myself to carve out some time for exercise.
It’s about balance for me, and I’m able to say now, based on my journey through this, that you, radical self-love, are not for me. I am able to love myself despite your reach, not because of it.
So, radical self-love: I reject you. I reject you. I reject you.
Sincerely,
Isabel
