Let's Talk About: Body Positivity
It’s fitting that this week I’d be writing about body positivity. This passed weekend I had the unique honor of getting to attend the Fierce! International Queer Burlesque festival on Saturday night and Sunday. It was successful in every possible sense of the term for me. I handed out about 400 condoms, met some amazing people, made some great connections. And the performers… They were other worldly with their beauty, grace, creativity, and sexiness. I mean, it’s burlesque, it was extremely sexy. What thrilled me the most wasn’t so much the skillful way that these people too their clothes off; it was the incredible parade of different bodies. There is no one burlesque body type. People of all different genders, races, sexuality, sizes, shapes. And every last one was perfection. I have known about body positivity for some time, I have known about diversity for some time. But seeing it the way I did this weekend was life changing. It was affirming, it was beautiful. It made me feel like change is possible.
I will admit to not always having the best relationship with my body. Our relationship has shifted from general apathy, to abuse, to great love, and everything in between. The whole notion of body positivity and radical self acceptance has been around for a while, but the idea that it could A- be something for me and B- be related to sex education hadn’t occurred to me. But once I started to think about it, it made sense. I have a body. It has cost me too many days, too many tears, too much pain to hate it. So maybe I should start loving it. And maybe it’s something we need to talk about.
The idea of loving yourself isn’t new. But I think the need for a strong movement towards body positivity and away from diet culture is new, and deeply necessary. Diet culture has been around since marketers realized they could make money off of people feeling bad about themselves. People are lead to believe that they are always just one diet, one protein shake, on gym membership, one more medication or product or what ever away from achieving their perfect body. The notion of what a “perfect body” is has changed. My first memories of “models” were from the “Heroin Chic” school in the mid 90s. Kate Moss and other women that looked gaunt, where their elbows were the widest parts of their arms. Thankfully that aesthetic has shifted some what, to what people think of as a more “heathy” woman. Unfortunately, the new “perfect” woman’s body is not actually any more reasonable for the vast majority of women. The ideal woman must be tall, long legs, with a tiny waist and well defined abs. She must have large round perky breasts, a perfectly round ass, and no body fat anywhere else on her body. Her skin and hair should be shiny and flawless. She is expected to be hairless from the neck down. Her thighs can not touch
For men it’s not that different. Tall, sculpted muscles, chiseled features and no body fat. Body hair only present in carefully chosen patches, but not “overly groomed” lest he appear to be gay. (Which, why one would assume personal grooming has anything to do with a person’s sexual orientation or why appearing to have one sexual orientation over another would be a bad thing is a topic for a whole other column).
Of course this is the idea right? To keep people chasing an impossible goal. To reinforce the idea that if you just try hard enough, if you just eat the right food, if you just work out enough you too can look like these perfect people.
Which leave out an important point. The perfect people that we are shown over and over and over again all day long? They don’t look like that either. Even Tyra Banks doesn’t look like Tyra Banks. Professional wardrobe, hair, makeup, lighting, photography, and photoshop can make anyone look like America’s Next Top Model. Of course, it’s worse now than it has ever been before. We don’t just have billboards and magazine racks and TV and movies, we carry the images of bodies we will never have with us everywhere we go. We follow beautiful people on instagram and twitter, who show us carefully filtered and curated versions of their lives in order to promote themselves or whatever product they’re shilling. I understand, I have an instagram ( @TheMagicCondomFairy ) and while I try to be honest, I am very careful about what I post.
So what is the body positivity movement? And why does it matter?
Body Positivity says: “There’s no wrong way to have a body”. It says “All bodies are good bodies. All bodies are beautiful bodies. All bodies deserve respect and love”.
We are told to equate beauty with value. We are told that beauty is limited to a select few of a certain size, shape, skin tone, bone structure etc… We are told that size is a matter of choice and that if people outside the ideal size range just worked harder and really dedicated themselves to it, they too could be beautiful and worthy of admiration. Because losing weight is virtuous. We are encouraged to see weight loss as a goal unto itself. It is not.
You do not need to lose weight to be perfect. You already are. Your body is already perfect. The only reason you feel like you are less than is because we have been lied to by people who would use our insecurities against us. And the crazy thing? Every one else’s body is perfect too. No one’s body is *better* than anyone else’s. Not really. No skin tone. No size. No shape. No ability. None of it. We all have our strengths.
If you want to lose weight for your own self, then that’s fine. But ask yourself why. Why do you feel like you need to lose weight? Are you trying to reach some ideal version of yourself? Who’s ideal version? Why do you need to change in order to be your ideal self?
Weight loss is praised to the point of fetishizing, as if a person who has a body that is larger than the ideal body size who is not actively engaged in some form of weight loss is somehow, wrong or lazy, or bad. People are encouraged to lose weight “for their health” with no real impression of what a healthy weight is. The BMI chart has been widely discredited. And to be honest, many attempts at weight loss are profoundly unhealthy. It’s no wonder that so many people end up yo-yo dieting, throwing themselves into a diet and then quickly running out of steam. It’s exhausting! People are encouraged to analyze every morsel of food that passes their lips, to “burn it off”. The constant barrage of messaging about what “healthy” should look like can lead to eating disorders just as quickly as fat shaming and the praise of Heroin chic.
Eating disorders are profoundly complicated and I will not be able to do the subject justice in this article. EDs are not limited to one body type, race, gender, or sexuality. A person who doesn’t eat or a person who eats and then purges it. It’s worth mentioning, because I wish someone had told me when I was young, that bulimia is not always a binge and purge cycle. Some bulimic people don’t really binge, they eat a normal amount of food then purge. And sometimes purging isn’t always throwing up. It can be excessive use of laxatives. Or even exercise. Some eating disorders can masquerade as healthy living. Orthorexia Nervosa is a term coined in 1996 by Dr. Steve Bratman that describes a disorder in which a person becomes obsessed with their diet and exercise regime to the detriment of everything else in their life. It’s not an officially recognized eating disorder in the DSM-5 but shares many characteristics with other disorders. What is unique about Orthorexia is that the person with the disorder is not as concerned with “thinness” but with “Health”. Unfortunately, given the often conflicting information flooding us daily, it’s easy to see how a desire to be “healthy” can lend itself to disordered thinking. If you or someone you love is suffering from an eating disorder, please get help. Visit: https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/ for more info.
I don’t want it to sound like everyone who is body positive is overweight, because that is certainly not true. Lots of people in the Body Positive movement are naturally thin, and are embracing their bodies, for every person who’s been made to feel bad for eating a cheeseburger there’s a skinny person who has been taunted with “Go eat a cheeseburger!”. The body positive movement is extremely supportive of eating well and exercising. But the difference is the attitude behind it. Are you eating to lose weight or are you eating to fuel your body? Are you working out to fit into a dress or are you working out because you like the way it makes you feel? These are small distinctions but can make a huge difference in the way you frame your day to day life.
There are other pieces to body positivity. Embracing one’s stretch marks and scars as beautiful. Body hair acceptance. There’s a big push to encourage people of all shapes and sizes and genders to wear whatever clothing most suits them. There’s no size limit on fabulous. Learning to love each and every part of yourself that might have been considered a flaw. I wish I could list every flaw and tell you that it is not a flaw but a signature. Unfortunately there are an infinite number of things that we are told to feel bad about.
The Body positive movement online has been a source of inspiration and comfort to me. I recommend following Megan @BodyPosiPanda_ (She has a book coming out on the subject that I can’t wait to read!) and Hot Pants @DoTheHotpants . They’re both brilliant and beautiful and so filled with positivity. A small word of caution, the hash tags #BoPo and #BoPosi are often used to reinforce toxic diet culture, to reinforce the idea that one can only be truly body positive if one is a certain size and shape, or trying to be. However there is also a lot of wonderful support out there, for body positivity and eating disorder recovery.
On a personal note: I find it extremely easy to be body positive when it comes to other people, especially my friends. It breaks my heart when one of the beautiful people that I know talks about themselves as if they are somehow ugly or worth less. To hear some one I love put down themselves is painful. I’ve told my friends before “If some one else was talking about you the way you are talking about you, we’d have a problem”. However, I struggle to maintain the attitude for myself. I often catch myself counting calories, making moral judgements about “bad” foods, or looking with a critical eye at my stretch marks. Being body positive is not as easy as waking up one morning and saying “I love myself now. I’m over all this crap”. It takes work. It takes being aware of your own mental process and it’s not easy. But to be honest, I believe it’s worth it.
Next week I’ll be discussing the definitions of and differences between bisexual, polysexual, and pansexual. Until then, stay safe you beautiful creatures. You are worth protecting.
-Erin