In a culture where social media influencers boast about their bodies online, making appearances and weight are the most important things about a person, the body positivity movement promises a refreshing perspective: love your body regardless of size or ability. While this message may seem empowering at first glance, the result is way more complicated than that. Despite the body positivity’s good intentions, it’s gone way too far.
America has had an obesity problem since the 60s, dating back to the origins of the fat rights movement, which many reference as the start of body positivity. This movement began with over 500 people meeting in New York City’s Central Park in protest against the bias of fat people in 1967, According to the Center For Discovery. When we look at the type of food Americans consume daily, including fast food like McDonald’s, it’s very unhealthy. Obesity can be linked to multiple serious health issues, even death. Yet, the body positivity movement continues to push aside these problems choosing to focus on self-love and victim blaming instead.
With the rise of the internet in the 2000s, cyberbullying started to become common as people hid behind screens, many targeting or using fat insults. This caused numerous fat-activists to speak up again, this time in a different light, explaining that some people can’t change their bodies and that self-love is essential. As of today, we see an influx of people online promoting the movement, criticizing social norms, and committing to living their lives without caring about the scale. The body positivity calls for demanding more inclusive architecture in places like airports, elevators, hotel rooms, and even homes to accommodate their size.
The movement is consistently promoted online in ways that show expressing an unhealthy lifestyle, fake self-love, and ignoring health concerns. Body positivity often sets people up for unrealistic goals, “Body positivity is a subset of toxic positivity,” notes Dr Albers, “Some feel that it blames people for how they feel based on their mindset. It can also push people into trying to feel something they don’t.”
Rather than pushing for unattainable and sometimes damaging ideas of constant “self-love”, we should approach a more balanced and realistic way of self-love, we should turn to body neutrality– focusing on what the body can do, neither with love nor hate but respect. This movement encourages the individual to focus on what their bodies can do then what they look like. Rather than feeding yourself fake love, this mindset offers a healthy alternative without glorifying obesity.
In the end, the body positivity movement has allowed multiple conversations about self-love and acceptance to be started. Its approach to glorifying obesity and not addressing health concerns is deeply problematic, with even trends being started to show how much you can eat, or what a fat person who doesn’t want to lose weight eats in a day. The reality of America’s obesity problem should not be ignored any further, Instead of fixating on unrealistic ideals of self-acceptance, we should focus on respecting what our bodies do for us and rewarding them with the proper nutrition. It’s time to embrace a conversation that acknowledges the problems in public health and come up with solutions and alternatives with realistic expectations and without the pressure to love or hate our bodies.
