Why Body Neutrality Is a Better Movement Than Body Positivity
photo courtesy of unsplash / freestocks
When I was six years old, I would go to the deli for my after-school snack: a moist turkey sandwich on a toasted roll with soda, chips, a baked good, and a piece of candy from the dusty shelf below the counter. It was heaven, a reward that made the brain-numbing torture of elementary school classes worth it. But if there’s something I miss from my childhood, it was the naivety that would be shattered three years later when I entered middle school.
As with everyone else, puberty changed my body drastically, and I became insecure about all of it. I developed more and more acne, gained weight, found out I had bone deformations that caused agonizing pain. I felt lost and I didn’t know who I was anymore. I was being ostracized for things that were beyond my control and drove my preteen angst into pariah mode, sending me into a tailspin of hurt, mostly from myself and the people whom I let hurt me.
Coincidentally, the body positivity movement started picking up momentum at this time. As I scoured the Internet, reading BuzzFeed articles and watching Laci Green on YouTube, I slowly became more and more seduced by the idea of unconditional self-love to combat the shit-show of hate around me. I even felt compelled to wear shorts and crop tops again.
However, as much as I appreciated the encouragement to feel free in all shapes and sizes that the body positivity movement gave to women like me, it felt like running in place. When we complimented each other or tried to one-up trolls on social media, I couldn’t help but have this itchy feeling that we were still viewing bodies in societies through the Eurocentric lens of approval. I couldn’t scroll past an Instagram post of a plus-sized woman in a swimsuit without a comment mentioning her weight. With this awareness, I couldn’t help but have my body dysmorphia kick into overdrive once again. I could never escape the notoriety of being a fat girl in society, no matter how good or bad the things said about me were.
Body dysmorphia was never really talked about in the body positivity sphere. If we did not like how we looked one day, we said our affirmations and moved on. The journey to self-acceptance felt like a never-ending pendulum. When would we finally realize that we didn’t need to oversexualize our bodies to feel comfortable every day?
This led to my eventual transition from body positivity into body neutrality. Body neutrality prioritizes an individual’s comfortability with their bodies on a much deeper level, going beyond what we look like on the outside. Being body neutral means knowing what our bodies can do, which builds inner confidence rather than the one we present to others. When I was trying to be body positive, I had to also ignore all these overwhelming societal pressures of our fatphobic Western culture, which felt impossible to do. But with body neutrality, there is no consideration of the Western physical beauty standards — you just exist. By recognizing and acknowledging our abilities, we can not only become more confident but can also maintain an objective view of how people interact with us and our bodies. This will increase respect from ourselves and from others, regardless of our appearance. And who doesn’t want that?