Is Body Positivity Still the Way?
“Love your body because it is beautiful.” This is the sentiment at the heart of the modern-day body positivity movement. At first glance, this seems like a mindset that is ultimately good, right? After all, it’s clear that Western beauty standards have historically only included thin white bodies with Eurocentric features. It can be seen as rebellious, even radical, to love one’s body in spite of a society that rejects it. But is self-love the end-all-be-all to taking on deeply-entrenched notions of beauty?
To start, one cannot deny the deep political roots of the body positivity movement. In the context of the United States, the Fat Liberation Movement has been around since the 70s, with groups such as the National Association to Aid Fat Americans (NAAFA). A page on the NAAFA’s website offers a glimpse into their history of activism: from national conventions to picketing outside of the White House, it’s obvious that Fat Liberation was not just a movement against mere aesthetic standards, but against oppression. This is even clearer with the NAAFA’s Fat Liberation Manifesto, which states the following:
“3. We see our struggles as allied with the struggles of other oppressed groups, against classism, racism, sexism, ageism, capitalism, imperialism, and the like.”
“We demand equal rights for fat people in all aspects of life, as promised in the Constitution of the United States. We demand equal access to goods and services in the public domain, and an end to discrimination against us in areas of employment, education, public facilities, and health services.”
Observations about modern body positivity make it clear that it is a watered-down, defanged version of a movement that was truly pushing for a world where marginalized bodies were not oppressed. Body positivity is often reduced to candy-colored infographics on Instagram with platitudes like “beautiful no matter what” and unfortunately shallow social media challenges encouraging users to “tag 5 users you think are beautiful”. There is rarely any mention or conversation about upending structures that have harmed and continue to harm those whose bodies violate norms of beauty.
Not to mention how body positivity has turned into yet another way corporations co-opt social justice movements to gain profit. Similarly to rainbow capitalism, where corporations will release Pride-related products as a way to appeal to the LGBTQ+ community, diversity has become a marketing tactic. Earlier this year, Victoria’s Secret rebranded to be more inclusive, despite decades of only centering thin women. Additionally, the start of women shaving their body hair as an aesthetic choice coincided with an increase of advertisements that deemed female body hair as ugly and unfeminine, as well as Gillette unveiling the first women’s razor in the 40s. Clearly, it was once profitable to make women insecure enough to buy their products. But once it wasn’t anymore, corporations changed their tune. Now, Gillette Venus’ website is filled with statements like, “my skin, my way” and, “dive into the stories of women who are owning their skin in a world obsessed with perfection”.
Furthermore, there must be an understanding that maybe self-love isn’t an attainable goal for many. Often, body positivity can feel pressured onto individuals. Why must I aspire to love my body every single second of every single day? Why must I believe I am beautiful in some way, to believe that I have worth?
Recently, body neutrality has arisen as a possible answer to these questions and an alternative to body positivity. Rather than emphasize self-love, body neutrality encourages having a neutral outlook on how your body looks. Instead of needing to feel beautiful, this perspective involves letting yourself just exist, totally independent of beauty. In summary: body neutrality is the idea that your body does not need to be beautiful to have worth, and you don’t need to love yourself every day, or even ever. Purveyors of body neutrality also seek to find value in the little things your body can do: for simply being able walk or wake up in the morning instead of attaching all of the value to aesthetic appearances.
This is not to see that body positivity and self-love have no value. Of course, being able to love yourself so that industries and corporations can’t take advantage of you is resistance. And it’s never a bad thing to feel good about yourself. Even body neutrality has its failings, as it doesn’t account for the political goals once held by fat activists of the 60s. However, our desire to combat harmful beauty standards shouldn’t begin and end there, with only changing how we individually view our bodies. The complete abolition of beauty standards will only come with the upheaval of the institutions that both create and perpetuate them.
Julianne