Ways We Get Body Positivity All Wrong
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“The body positivity movement.” The word “positivity” is built right into the phrase, and yet, many social media posts and media surrounding body positivity seem rather negative. Sadly, research has found that as many as 80 percent of women are not happy with their appearance, and 50 percent of Americans are displeased with their current weight. That’s a lot of people who feel a lot of negativity about their bodies. And that’s no small deal, seeing as we take our bodies everywhere with us. You could say your body is one location you cannot escape, so it’s tragic to feel you wish you could “escape” it. The body positivity movement is meant to help us alleviate negative feelings about our bodies, wherever we are in our journeys. It’s about positive thinking and sending out positive messages, but it sometimes feels like being positive about bodies means being negative about some bodies.
The body positivity movement has also, unfortunately, normalized and even encouraged literally unhealthy behaviors. It’s an incredibly complicated and sensitive subject, and as a reaction to some certainly outdated and negative messages, it’s possible we’ve overcorrected by swinging to the other extreme. But extremes are never sustainable, and rarely healthy. Here are ways we get body positivity wrong.
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Emphasizing body over mind
Sometimes you’ll see women post very honest photos of themselves from a time in their lives when they were severely underweight as a result of an eating disorder. Next to it, they’ll post an image of their current selves, and they’ll detail the journey they went through with the eating disorder, and what they had to overcome to release that control over their weight, and be happy to be the weight they are today. These are powerful and inspiring posts. But then, the comments can miss the mark – and I’m guilty of having done this myself. People will comment “You look great today!” or “You look better today!” What would the right comment be? “You look happy today.” The emphasis can often be on just the appearance and not the mindset behind it. The mindset, for someone who has overcome such issues, is not only the most important part, but also, praising their appearance today re-emphasizes that it’s their looks that matter most.
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Loving one body by hating another
The fashion industry did get things wrong for quite some time. Their standard for models were individuals who were so thin that they were medically and severely underweight, and likely even lost their periods, and faced fertility issues because of it. It’s wonderful that we’re moving away from that. But as a way of supporting healthier bodies, sometimes, we shame thin individuals, and that isn’t right, either. There is no such thing as “shaming in the right direction,” but it seems that’s exactly what our society is doing. It is not okay to discuss that someone is overweight but, for some reason, it is okay to say that someone is so skinny they “look scary” or “need to eat a sandwich” or “obviously have a problem.” We need to find ways to support healthy bodies without shaming those we perceive to be unhealthy.
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Dismissing the medical community
This is an incredibly testy subject that often receives a lot of criticism. But here are the facts: if an individual’s body mass index (BMI) is above 30.0, that individual is medically obese. Society has unfortunately contorted the word “obese” to be some sort of slang or insult. It is a medical term. Obese individuals are at a heightened risk of type two diabetes, stroke, heart disease, and all causes of death. So when an obese individual posts about a doctor asking them to lose weight, stating that doctor is body shaming them, or encouraging unrealistic beauty standards, they are denying an important fact and manipulating the conversation into something it is not about. That doctor does not want to see that individual face health issues or die an untimely death. That is all. It is not about beauty standards or societal standards. We need to stop turning conversations about health and medical facts into other conversations, as a way of avoiding important truths pertaining to wellness and mortality.
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Not telling the whole truth
Sometimes you will see conventionally fit individuals post photos of themselves with a giant box of donuts or platter of nachos, claiming that they eat donuts and nachos every day. The intention behind the post is good, which is to state that you can still eat foods you enjoy and be in good shape. But there is unintentional harm being done: they are perpetuating the idea that they eat a whole box of donuts or a whole mountain of nachos, every single day, all to themselves. In reality in most cases (it’s not true for all), that individual may eat a single donut a day, or share a giant mountain of nachos with three friends. The danger behind not telling that whole truth is that onlookers might get the idea, “I can eat 15 donuts a day and be in shape,” and then, when they do exactly that, and put on weight, they will believe something is wrong with them. Portion control and moderation are a factor when it comes to heavy foods. Not everybody’s body responds the same way to certain foods. If we don’t tell these whole truths, we can inspire unhealthy habits in others, and set up unrealistic expectations.
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Encouraging emotional eating
There are some unhealthy habits that society seems to have agreed are “bad,” and some that society seems to have agreed are “endearing” or “funny” or “socially acceptable.” But the truth stated at the top remains: they are unhealthy. Starving oneself or denying oneself of food is, decidedly, bad. But turning to a gallon of ice cream or an XL pizza, all to oneself, when feeling emotionally down, has been deemed socially acceptable – or at least funny/endearing/relatable. We’ll see women post a photo sitting among giant bags of cookies and chips with a caption like, “Had a bad day LOL!” and we “Like” the photo. What is really happening here is we are encouraging attaching food to emotions, and food is not meant to be attached to emotions. Food is about fuel and wellness. In the same way we have agreed that we shouldn’t deprive ourselves of food because of emotions like, wanting to be in control, we should also agree that we shouldn’t over-indulge in food in response to other negative emotions. Any time we encourage tying food up with feelings, we are potentially setting someone on an unhealthy path.
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Pressure to bare it all
It’s really not up to anyone to tell anyone else how they should feel about their body, and how much they should want to share of their body. If one individual wants to bare it all in a revealing photo as a way of encouraging self-love, that’s wonderful, but we can’t shame those who aren’t ready or willing to do that. We may think we are encouraging self-love when we pressure a friend who isn’t comfortable with her body to take off her sarong at the pool or to wear a sleeveless shirt, but we are doing quite the opposite. Now we are making her feel bad about not fully, completely loving her body. You can and should hope your friends reach that place with their bodies one day, but you can’t shame them if they aren’t there yet.
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Telling others what they need/can do
“Eat the cake. You can afford it.” “You should really eat a sandwich.” “Have the cookies – you can because you went to the gym.” When we try to calculate what others “can” or “should” do, we are again emphasizing the physical over the emotional. There must be balance. Both elements – the physical and the emotional – must be kept in mind. Perhaps your friend who you say “can afford to eat the cake” is trying to gain control over her sweet tooth. But when you say “You can afford it” it implies that there are others who can’t afford it, and it implies that she’s holding back because she thinks she needs to lose weight. If someone tells you their limit, such as, “I’m not eating dairy right now” or “I’m not having sweets right now,” it’s not up to anyone else to tell them whether or not they can or should draw that line.
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Condemning the scale
Photos of women throwing their scales in to the ocean, or smashing them with a baseball bat, will get thousands of views. This is meant to be a healthy move for women who once felt “tied to the scale,” and let their entire sense of self-worth come from that number on the scale. It is important to not be too fixated on what’s on the scale, and not equate your value to that number. But…the scale never did anything to anyone. In fact, scales are an important part of monitoring our health. Sudden and drastic changes in weight can be indicators of underlying health issues. Furthermore, the fact remains that some women would like to do regular check-ins, to make sure they aren’t unknowingly putting on a substantial amount of weight. Society seems to have decided the scale is bad, all bad, and bad for everyone, but that is not true.
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Leaking unphotoshopped images
Sometimes, someone will grab a hold of unphotoshopped images of a celebrity – images showing cellulite, a larger waist, no actual thigh gap, and other things – and leak them to the world. The idea behind this action is to show people that what we see in magazines sets us up for unrealistic expectations and that the world of beauty and fashion is all lies. But, that is still an individual in those photos. That may be an individual who wasn’t quite ready to show their body, as is, to the world. Unfortunately, in these moments, it seems there is no regard whatsoever for the feelings of the person in the photos.
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Glorifying unhealthy food
Look, many years ago, documentaries like “Super Size Me” brought to light the terrible ways regularly eating fast food can harm one’s health. Then, there seemed to be a reverse trend in condemning anything that condemns fast food because, well, many reasons – like the fact that Americans run on fast food, and many Americans rely on fast food establishments for employment. The facts about fast food were facts we weren’t ready for, so we twisted things, and made it about “unrealistic beauty standards” again, and now you see fit models posting about how much they love their Big Macs or Doritos Tacos. Similar to when an obese individual turns their doctor’s professional medical advice into some social commentary that it is not, we have made fast-food-hate and unrealistic-body standards one in the same. But they are not. The fact remains that there ae ingredients in fast food associated with cancer, fertility issues, and even the diminishment of probiotic benefits. We do not do anyone any favors by distorting the message about fast food, and making this a “beauty standards” thing. This is a health thing.
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