Body positivity is one of those things that sounds progressive based on the general vibe but is actually not at all. While the idea of loving your body is not inherently toxic, the movement itself is undeniably anti-feminist. Huge campaigns are aimed at girls and women, all sending the same message: you deserve to feel pretty! Naturally, this implies prettiness is something every girl should prioritize. Why aren’t there body positivity campaigns for boys? I have yet to see an organization dedicated to telling men their bodies deserve to be celebrated.
The body positivity movement targets girls because their bodies are and have always been tied to their worth. Women’s bodies are on display everywhere — magazines, commercials, television shows. Little girls aren’t born with the compulsion to be perceived as small and desirable and feminine, they are taught this by the commercialization of their bodies.
And everybody knows girls think about their bodies. I don’t want or need to look up eating disorder statistics, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a woman who hasn’t tried, even just for a day, starving herself. But having plus size women pose in front of a camera in a bikini is still pandering to the gaze of others and still trapping women in the same prison of beauty culture. The attempted subversion of societal ideals fails because it still equates beauty to worth. Your stretch marks are acceptable because they’ve been reclaimed as “sexy,” you should love your curves because being curvy is “in.” We don’t need to keep changing and expanding the trends — women’s bodies should not be a trend. This large-scale commodification of women’s bodies places them in one of two categories: attractive or inferior. The solution is not to extend the concept of attractiveness.
I understand the appeal, though. It’s a quick and painless fix. It’s easier to say “all bodies are beautiful” than to stop reducing women to their bodies. It’s easier to find empowerment in the things that hurt you.
And the notion that creating a new, enlarged standard of beauty will somehow absolve people of hating their bodies is incredibly detached from reality. Anyone with an eating disorder can tell you there isn’t a magical finish line when they reach the “desired” body type. I’m not suggesting the media plays no part in eating disorders — it absolutely does — but the solution is going to have to be more material than tacky company slogans.
I never want to hear someone tell me to embrace my hip dips or rib flares or buccal fat. I want those terms to be removed from the face of the earth. While I do believe proponents of body positivity are genuinely trying to help women, their solution is plainly reductive no matter how palatable. As long as worth is correlated with desirability, women will dissect nutrition labels and shower in the dark. The solution needs to be deemphasizing bodies instead of treating them like exotic designs to be collected in a style catalog.
TL;DR:
you're so real for this thank you
Slay