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fatliberation · 3 years

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I’m Abandoning Body Positivity and Here’s Why

In short: it’s fatphobic.

“A rallying cry for a shift in societal norms has now become the skinny girl’s reassurance that she isn’t really fat. Fatness, through this lens of ‘body positivity’, remains the worst thing a person can be.” (Kayleigh Donaldson)

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I have always had a lot of conflicting opinions about the body positivity movement, but it’s much more widely known (and accepted, go figure) than the fat liberation movement, so I often used the two terms interchangeably in conversation about anti-fatness. But the longer I’ve been following the body positivity movement, the more I’ve realized how much it has strayed from its fat lib origins. It has been hijacked; deluded to center thin, able, white, socially acceptable bodies.

Bopo’s origins are undoubtedly grounded in fat liberation. The fat activists of the 1960s paved the way for the shred of size acceptance we see in media today, initially protesting the discrimination and lack of access to equal opportunities for fat people specifically. This early movement highlighted the abuse, mental health struggles, malpractice in the medical field, and called for equal pay, equal access, equal respect, an end to fatphobic structures and ideas. It saddens me that it hasn’t made much progress in those regards.

Today, the #bopo movement encapsulates more the idea of loving your own body versus ensuring that individuals regardless of their weight and appearance are given equal opportunities in the workplace, schools, fashion and media. Somehow those demands never made it outside of the ‘taboo’ category, and privileged people would much more readily accept the warm and fuzzy, sugar-coated message of “love yourself!” But as @yrfatfriend once said, this idea reduces fat people’s struggles to a problem of mindset, rather than a product of external oppressors that need to be abolished in order for fat people to live freely.

That generalized statement, “love yourself,” is how a movement started by fat people for the rights of fat people was diluted so much, it now serves a thin model on Instagram posting about how she has a tummy roll and cellulite on her thighs - then getting praised for loving her body despite *gasp!* its minor resemblance to a fat body.

Look. Pretty much everyone has insecurities about their bodies, especially those of us who belong to marginalized groups. If you don’t have body issues, you’re a privileged miracle, but our beauty-obsessed society has conditioned us to want to look a certain way, and if we have any features that the western beauty standard considers as “flaws,” yeah! We feel bad about it! So it’s not surprising that people who feel bad about themselves would want to hop on a movement that says ‘hey, you’re beautiful as you are!’ That’s a message everyone would like to hear. Any person who has once thought of themselves as less than beautiful now feels that this movement is theirs. And everyone has insecurities, so everyone feels entitled to the safe space. And when a space made for a minority includes the majority, the cycle happens again and the majority oppresses the minority. What I’m trying to explain here is that thin people now feel a sense of ownership over body positive spaces.

Regardless of how badly thin people feel about their bodies, they still experience thin privilege. They can sit down in a theater or an airplane without even thinking about it, they can eat in front of others without judgement, they can go the doctor with a problem and actually have it fixed right away, they can find cute clothes in their size with ease, they do not suffer from assumptions of laziness/failure based on stereotype, they see their body type represented everywhere in media, the list goes on and on. They do not face discrimination based off of the size of their body.

Yet diet culture and fatphobia affects everyone, and of course thin people do still feel bad about the little fat they have on their bodies. But the failure to examine WHY they feel bad about it, is what perpetuates fatphobia within the bopo movement. They’re labeled “brave” for showing a pinch of chub, yet fail to address what makes it so acceptably daring, and how damaging it is to people who are shamed for living in fat bodies. Much like the rest of society, thin body positivity is still driven by the fear of fat, and does nothing to dismantle fatphobia within structures or within themselves.

Evette Dionne sums it up perfectly in her article, “The Fragility of Body Positivity: How a Radical Movement Lost Its Way.”

“The body-positive media economy centers these affirming, empowering, let-me-pinch-a-fat-roll-to-show-how-much-I-love-myself stories while failing to actually challenge institutions to stop discriminating against fat people. More importantly, most of those stories center thin, white, cisgender, heterosexual women who have co-opted the movement to build their brands. Rutter has labeled this erasure ‘Socially Acceptable Body Positivity.’

“On social media, it actually gets worse for fat bodies: We’re not just being erased from body positivity, fat women are being actively vilified. Health has become the stick with which to beat fat people with [sic], and the benchmark for whether body positivity should include someone” (Dionne).

Ah, yes. The medicalization of fat bodies, and the moralization of health. I’ve ranted about this before. Countless comments on posts of big women that say stuff like “I’m all for body positivity, but this is just unhealthy and it shouldn’t be celebrated.” I’ve heard writer/activist Aubrey Gordon once say that body positivity has become something like a shield for anti-fatness. It’s anti-fatness that has been repackaged as empowerment. It’s a striking double-standard. Fat people are told to be comfortable in their bodies (as if that’s what’s going to fix things) but in turn are punished when they’re okay with being fat. Make it make sense.

Since thin people feel a sense of ownership over body positive spaces, and they get to hide behind “health” when they are picking and choosing who can and cannot be body positive, they base it off of who looks the most socially acceptable. And I’m sure they aren’t consciously picking and choosing, it comes from implicit bias. But the socially acceptable bodies they center are small to medium fat, with an hourglass shape. They have shaped a new beauty standard specifically FOR FAT PEOPLE. (Have you ever seen a plus sized model with neck fat?? I’m genuinely asking because I have yet to find one!) The bopo movement works to exclude and silence people who are on the largest end of the weight spectrum.

Speaking of exclusion, let’s talk about fashion for a minute.

For some reason, (COUGH COUGH CAPITALISM) body positivity is largely centered around fashion. And surprise surprise, it’s still not inclusive to fat people. Fashion companies get a pat on the back for expanding their sizing two sizes up from what they previously offered, when they are still leaving out larger fat people completely. In general, clothing companies charge more for clothes with more fabric, so people who need the largest sizes are left high and dry. It’s next to impossible to find affordable clothes that also look nice. Fashion piggybacks on the bopo movement as a marketing tactic, and exploits the very bodies it claims to be serving. (Need I mention the time Urban Outfitters used a "curvy” model to sell a size it doesn’t even carry?)

The movement also works to exclude and silence fat Black activists.

In her article, “The Body Positivity Movement Both Takes From and Erases Fat Black Women” Donyae Coles explains how both white people and thin celebrities such as Jameela Jamil profit from the movement that Black women built.

“Since long before blogging was a thing, fat Black women have been vocal about body acceptance, with women like Sharon Quinn and Marie Denee, or the work of Sonya Renee Taylor with The Body Is Not An Apology. We’ve been out here, and we’re still here, but the overwhelming face of the movement is white and thin because the mainstream still craves it, and white and thin people have no problem with profiting off the work of fat, non-white bodies.”

“There is a persistent belief that when thin and/or white people enter the body positive realm and begin to repeat the messages that Black women have been saying for years in some cases, when they imitate the labor that Black women have already put in that we should be thankful that they are “boosting” our message. This completely ignores the fact that in doing so they are profiting off of that labor. They are gaining the notoriety, the mark of an expert in something they learned from an ignored Black woman” (Coles).

My next essay will go into detail about this and illuminate key figures who paved the way for body acceptance in communities of color.

The true purpose of this movement has gotten completely lost. So where the fuck do we go from here?

We break up with it, and run back to the faithful ex our parents disapproved of. We go back to the roots of the fat liberation movement, carved out for us by the fat feminists, the queer fat activists, the fat Black community, and the allies it began with. Everything they have preached since the 1960s and 70s is one hundred percent applicable today. We get educated. We examine diet culture through a capitalist lens. We tackle thin, white-supremacist systems and weight based discrimination, as well as internalized bias. We challenge our healthcare workers to unlearn their bias, treat, and support fat patients accordingly. We make our homes and spaces accessible and welcoming to people of any size, or any (dis)ability. “We must first protect and uplift people in marginalized bodies, only then can we mandate self-love” (Gordon).

Think about it. In the face of discrimination, mistreatment, and emotional abuse, we as a society are telling fat people to love their bodies, when we should be putting our energy toward removing those fatphobic ideas and structures so that fat people can live in a world that doesn’t require them to feel bad about their bodies. It’s like hitting someone with a rock and telling them not to bruise!

While learning to love and care for the body that you’re in is important, I think that body positivity also fails in teaching that because it puts even more emphasis on beauty. Instead of saying, “you don’t have to be ‘beautiful’ to be loved and appreciated,” its main lesson is that “all bodies are beautiful.” We live in a society obsessed with appearance, and it is irresponsible to ignore the hierarchy of beauty standards that exist in every space. Although it should be relative, “beautiful” has been given a meaning. And that meaning is thin, abled, symmetric, and eurocentric.

Beauty and ugliness are irrelevant, made-up constructs. People will always be drawn to you no matter what, so you deserve to exist in your body without struggling to conform to an impossible and bigoted standard. Love and accept your body for YOURSELF AND NO ONE ELSE, because you do not exist to please the eyes of other people. That’s what I wish we were teaching instead. Radical self acceptance!

As of today, the ultimate message of the body positivity movement is: Love your body “despite its imperfections.” Or people with “perfect and imperfect bodies both deserve love.” As long as we are upholding the notion that there IS a perfect body that looks a certain way, and every body that falls outside of that category is imperfect, we are upholding white supremacy, eugenics, anti-fatness, and ableism.

#body positivity #bopo #body posi #body positive #body acceptance #fat acceptance #fat activism #fat liberation #anti fatness #anti blackness #anti fat bias #lookism #beauty standards #self acceptance

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ouraidengray4 · 6 years

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Is the Body-Positivity Movement Going Too Far?

In 2010, Linda Bacon, Ph.D., published Health at Every Size, which promoted the idea that everyone should have respect regardless of their weight. Bacon also started a group of the same name to give people resources to stop dieting and find professionals that agree with the idea that fat doesn’t always mean unhealthy. From there, the body-positivity—or fat-positivity—movement grew and began to reduce the stigma of being heavy. People are finally hearing the message that everyone should love their body, no matter what the media or diet industry might say.

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Well, doesn’t that sound lovely? What a wonderful world, where overweight people would be seen as ordinary folks, instead of lazy, stupid failures with no self-control. But things don’t stay nice for long. At least, not if the internet is involved.

Some members of the body-positive movement have started to promote some pretty extreme concepts. Like when Everyday Feminism wrote, "Let’s make something clear: Having a goal for intentional fat loss is not body positive." Or when Ashley Graham lost some weight and received comments like, "I am no longer a fan of yours. You betrayed a lot of people!" as reported by CNN. Or when body-positive blogger Ragen Chastain said, "There is not a single study where more than a tiny fraction of people have succeeded at weight loss long term, and there is no study that shows that people who lose weight live longer or become healthier. Prescribing weight loss for health is like prescribing learning to fly for knee pain." And don’t forget Salon, with its piece comparing weight loss to gay conversion therapy, which... no.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

But how can body positivity be bad?

First of all, the basic ideals of body positivity are not bad: People should not be mistreated because of their weight, and we should never feel pressured to get our bodies to fit some model ideal of "thinness." That’s clearly not possible—or remotely healthy—for most people. And we should all learn to love ourselves, whether we’re a size 4 or size 24.

But it’s not that easy. In fact, for some people, like myself, the body-positivity movement only makes things more complicated: Fat people now get the privilege of being judged by others for being too big while simultaneously being preached at that they should just love themselves, muffin-top and all.

"I find body positivity an unrealistic expectation," says Kimberly Hershenson, LMSW, a therapist with years of experience treating eating disorders and weight issues. "People in general struggle to ‘love their bodies.’ Someone who has struggled with body image issues cannot suddenly change from body-hatred to loving the way they look."

Hershenson advises her clients to focus on things outside of their body to find self-love. Instead of trying to suddenly love the body you’ve always hated, she suggests thinking of your body as a neutral. You don’t have to love or hate it—it’s just a body, and the self is so much more than just its outer packaging.

Outside of the unrealistic expectation to simply start "loving yourself at any size," some body-positivity activists insist that weight has nothing to do with your health. Sadly, this isn’t true. As Aditi G Jha, M.D., of JustDoc.com says, "Central obesity is the number one factor associated with diabetes, hypertension, and infertility, in their respective orders."

Psychologist Deb Thompson, Ph.D., adds, "Obesity is clearly recognized by world and national health organizations as a leading risk factor for disease and death. The body-positivity movement's denial of science is troubling."

Also, for most people, being heavier really does not feel better. As a lucky lady who gained a ton of weight over the course of a year, I felt the difference: I got winded easily, my body ached more, and I started developing plantar fasciitis. Though I’m still big, I’ve lost about 30 pounds so far, and it feels better.

So the body-positivity movement isn't wrong, exactly...

Sure, there are some extreme people who are making the movement look like a bunch of jags. For example, it’s beyond unfortunate that Chastain and Salon both compare fatphobia with homophobia. I’m not saying it’s easy being a fat person, but gay panic has caused a lot more harm throughout history. At the height of homophobia, gay men were labeled as mentally ill, pedophiles, or both. People were jailed and castrated just for being gay. Sure, fat people might get called names and crappy looks from people on the train, but few people have been literally murdered just for being fat.

My hatred of the anti-gay/anti-fat correlation aside, most of the body-positivity movement isn’t wrong. Even though statements like "weight loss is not body positive" sound extreme—they have a point.

True body positivity means you can do whatever you want with your body as long as you do it with love. Some people do need to lose weight for their health, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Others want to lose weight to look better—and that’s their right. If you aren’t obsessed with losing weight, then I don’t think it’s a problem.

But dieting culture is a problem for a lot of people.

Let’s take a little journey through my fatness, to illustrate the unfortunate effects of our dieting culture.

Personally, I was always chubby, and I never felt bad about it—until junior high. I wasn’t made fun of or criticized for my weight. In fact, if I ever said, "Oh, well I’m so fat," I’d hear an instant chorus of "Oh, my God. Don’t say that! No, don’t think that about yourself."

Though I wasn’t allowed to say fat, that didn’t stop every other girl I knew from commenting on her appearance. Once we hit 14, a part of every lunch period was devoted to each girl talking about how fat she was—these were all thin girls, by the way. So, I thought, If they think they’re fat, they must think I’m some monster! This began my wonderful journey of hating my body that continues to this very day.

You might hope that all this "I’m so fat" talk would disappear after high school, but it’s still going strong. About half the time I hang out with a group of women, we get into a whole "my [insert body part here] is so horrible" conversation. Of course, I can’t actually join in on the contest of who hates themselves more because if I talk about feeling fat, people just sadly look away, a faint, "well..." passing through their lips.

Now I truly am fat, and people—friends—act like it’s the saddest thing I could ever be. Friends who don’t even realize they’re acting this way and would never purposely say anything to make me feel bad. Even if they’d never consciously judge a fat person negatively, they’re responding to a little, internal voice that says, "Yeah, but if she just tried a little harder..."

We’ve been trained to think of "fat" as "bad," and you can’t reverse a lifetime of thinking in a couple of years’ worth of blog posts.

So when people talk about body positivity and dieting, it’s understandable why people in the BP movement get upset. Blogger and YouTuber FatGirlFlow discusses her history with eating disorders, doctors who continually told her to lose weight, and how dieting to be "healthy" nearly killed her. Eventually, she found the body-positivity movement, which "saved her life."

So although it sounds extreme to say that dieting and weight loss are not part of body positivity, I think there’s some truth to that statement. That doesn’t mean you can’t lose weight or want to lose weight and still think positively of yourself. Individuals should do whatever they want.

But there should also be some space out there on the internet for women not to have to hear about dieting, because when you say you need to diet, that makes girls like me feel like we need to diet. When body-positive activists like FatGirlFlow say "keep dieting out of body positivity," they aren’t telling you not to lose weight—they just need a break from hearing that weight loss will always be the answer.

Does body positivity promote obesity?

Think about it: Can a couple of bloggers and a Dove ad really make thin women binge on Häagen-Dazs and gain 40 pounds? This movement isn’t nearly big enough to really make people feel good about being obese, and it’s certainly not going to convince people that fat is the new black.

Sure, some of the claims that obesity has no link to health are misleading. But the truth is that the science around health and obesity is far from clear.

"Yes, weight can affect your health, and there has been research to show that there may be some correlation," says Zach Cordell, registered dietitian nutritionist. "However, in the scientific community, we know that correlation is not causation. Just because obesity and diabetes rates have risen in tandem doesn't prove that they are connected. You could also draw that correlation between the availability of organic foods and diabetes. Does that mean that because more organic food is available, more people have diabetes? No, it is just a correlation."

Cordell says that obesity and diabetes have quite a few links, but that a person’s behavior is more predictive of disease than their size. Yes, many obese people eat poorly or don’t exercise. But that’s not always the case. Some overweight people don’t eat junk food all the time and are still heavy. And there are quite a few thin folks who frequent the McDonald’s drive-thru. Though obesity is a symptom of unhealthy behavior, it’s not necessarily the cause of all disease.

Then, take a look a nutritional information. Doctors’ recommendations change drastically every ten years or so (remember when Snackwells would save us all?). Now, this isn’t a bad thing: It’s good that science is always evolving. But it’s frustrating when you’re told to eat a bunch of eggs, then five years later, you hear that all those omelets will probably give you a heart attack.

Even now, you can read material written by Joel Fuhrman, M.D., and be convinced that his almost no-fat, vegan diet is the only way to get thin and healthy—and he’s got the scientific studies to prove it! Then, you read The Obesity Code by Jason Fung, M.D., and learn that the amount of fat you eat has exactly no correlation to weight gain. In his opinion, insulin is primarily to blame for weight gain, so you should intermittently fast and eat a diet high in fat and low in carbs—and he’s got the scientific studies to prove it!

Now, I’m not a doctor, but the studies for each of those diets seem equally valid, even though they’re diametrically opposed. Cordell agrees that either of those diets, or anything in-between, can work for people. Cordell says that it doesn’t really matter what the results of all the new studies are—you have to choose a way of eating that works for you and that you can keep up for the rest of your life. Almost any diet can prove some kind of weight loss, but those studies don’t reveal the fact that to keep the weight off, you have to eat healthily forever.

And weight loss isn’t always the answer.

I know from experience that weight is not the primary factor of healthiness. When I was 275 pounds, all my bloodwork was good: low blood pressure, low cholesterol, good everything. Now, I didn’t feel good at that weight, but I was technically fine.

We’ve been trained to think of "fat" as "bad," and you can’t reverse a lifetime of thinking in a couple of years of blog posts.

But when you’re heavy, the first thing a doctor tells you is "lose weight." This has happened to me—when I weighed a lot less—and to many others. When I last went to the doctor, she said, "Eat 1,200 calories a day. You can eat up to 1,500, but try to keep it closer to 1,200."

Now, this is bad for a few reasons: One, I’m a fat lady in her 30s. Do you think I’ve never tried dieting before? Have I lived under some fat-blocking rock for the last three decades and suddenly emerged as my unpleasantly plump self? No. I’ve tried lots of diets, my friend.

Also, if you have a bad history with obsession and weight, there’s no better way to trigger that than having a doctor tell you to starve yourself. (Also, this doctor was my same weight and said how she "felt sorry for Harvey Weinstein" after all the allegations came out. Just to paint a clearer picture of my hell.)

My little story is just one of many, but if the body-positive movement can help bigger people not get immediately brushed off by every doctor, that would be a huge victory in and of itself. I’m not saying doctors shouldn’t mention weight. But when weight loss is the only answer they give, that’s a problem.

Also, doctors should always approach weight with empathy: Ask the patient if they have a history of eating disorders. Ask them why they want to lose weight and why they’ve had trouble in the past. Then work with them to find an eating plan that the patient might actually stick to.

People can be overweight and healthy. Chastain just completed the Life Time Tri, a mini-triathlon. Now, can people be obese and healthy? I don’t know. But what’s better? Someone who’s able to live an active life at a heavy weight or someone slightly smaller who devotes all their mental energy to dieting? I know there are shades between those extremes, but believe me, if you’re trying to go from obese to a normal BMI, it’s very hard to keep obsession from kicking in.

I’ve had mixed feelings about the body-positivity movement, but I’ve become more positive for body positivity than I would have thought. To me, they’re asking that we end the cycle of obsessing over our bodies. Sure, some proponents of this movement go too far and claim that people who lose weight are traitors. But most advocate just appreciating yourself as you are, and that means being OK with wanting to lose weight or being OK with staying heavy.

Still, there aren’t a lot of winners here. Most people are stuck in this weird limbo between fatphobia and body positivity. Model Ashley Graham got criticized for losing weight but also got crap for "promoting obesity" when she was on the cover of Sports Illustrated. People who try to slim down get lots of positive attention when they start to lose, but if they lose too much, the folks around them start saying things like, "Are you sick?" or "You’re getting too skinny. It’s not healthy." You can never win.

And you want to know the really sad thing? When I see people like FatGirlFlow and Ragen Chastain, a part of me applauds them for their self-acceptance. But also? A little voice always says, "Yeah, but if she just tried a little harder…"

Amber Petty is a freelance writer in Los Angeles. If you like easy crafts and Simpsons gifs, check out her blog, Half-Assed Crafts.

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foursprouthealth-blog · 6 years

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Is the Body-Positivity Movement Going Too Far?

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/health/is-the-body-positivity-movement-going-too-far/

Is the Body-Positivity Movement Going Too Far?

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