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Is Body Positivity truly positive?

Writer's picture: BelBel
Sep 20, 20227 min read

Updated: Sep 28, 2022

Hello, Lovely Soul Drop! I have many topics I wish to write about, but today I felt like talking about the Body Positivity movement. What is this movement? According to MedicalNewsToday (2022) it “has its roots in the fat rights movement of the 1960s. The National Association to Aid Fat Americans (NAAFA) campaigned for equal rights for people of higher weights and criticized the diet industry.” The goal was to make everyone see beauty in their bodies regardless of what the media portrays or not as beautiful. Is this movement truly bringing positivity into social media?


What I would expect from this community is portraying amputees, burn marks victims, people with skin issues, disabled people, and more. Men should be represented too! That’s what I thought it would be like. Turns out? I have seen that is more about obese women claim they are gorgeous AND that you MUST think the same or you’re fatphobic. Victimhood mentality infests most movements with ease because it’s easier to say “I’m a victim of unfortunate circumstances and I’m in no way responsible for my problems, so I can blame everyone else without taking action” than to understand that our life is a complex mix of our environment, genes, background, etc. (Things we can’t control) and our choices, mindset, actions, etc. (Things we can control). I will look at this issue from my personal perspective and share my opinion based on this. In other words, the lens I’m using is a mix of the knowledge I have (not an expert) and what I have experienced in my personal life. Subjective and objective, let’s see if I can find balance between the two.




The Body Positive movement raises various points to defend itself. One is “Health at every size” which claims that you can’t know if someone is healthy or not just by looking at them, and that health and weight have nothing to do with one another. I agree with the first part! I’m chronically ill, so I’m not healthy, but if I were to ask a stranger if they think I’m healthy just by looking at me…they would claim I have excellent health! A rather annoying experience that I’m getting used to. “You don’t look sick! You’re obviously faking!” and so on. Furthermore, we have mental illness. Despite what the romanticization of mental illness might make you think…mentally ill or disordered people don’t have a look. My husband is Autistic and I’m neurodivergent (Borderline Personality along with various Autistic traits, not enough to enter the spectrum though); for most people we are just like anyone else because we look “normal” yet reality is far from that.


On the other hand? Weight has a relationship with health. Some people might look unhealthy or healthy when they are not, however, there was a reason why that anorexic-heroin-addict-look was troublesome. I have friends who are naturally thin and bony. They got bullied because of that. Comments such as “You’re a walking plank! Are you always on a diet? I’m sure you only eat salads” were annoying and sometimes ill-intentioned. Nowadays, Tess Holliday and the like are parading around claiming how healthy they are. Did you have an issue with the all bones and skin models? Then why not have an issue with the models who look like they would crush your bones by sitting on top of you? Neither look is healthy or a good ideal image. There’s nothing wrong with having models with different body types, yet to claim there’s no negative impact whatsoever or glorification of obesity is disingenuous.


Another point that the Body Positivity community raises is “Health is not everything, it doesn’t make you more valuable, and you don’t really care about my health”. I also agree that people don’t have to be healthy or canonically beautiful to deserve kindness or just basic human decency. After all, I’m not healthy and I doubt everyone finds me gorgeous. Treating people unkindly rarely has a good reason to back that up, if ever. At the same time, many have real concerns about the negative impact glorifying obesity or encouraging things as “intuitive eating always works”. Sure, some may comment on your post “that’s not healthy” just to annoy you, but when I speak against this movement it is because I truly care. Same about glorifying disability or mental illness on social media instead of raising awareness, but that’s a whole other can of worms.





“Being obese is not only great, but it’s never our fault!” Honestly, there are many issues that could make it easier for someone to gain weight or harder to lose it. Three of my friends are struggling to gain weight due to various medical conditions, while my chronic illness has made me gain weight. Even so, it’s not true that there is nothing you can do to gain or lose weight. As I said before, some things are out of our control, still there are some things that are under our control! Depression made me feel that I was trapped in my current situation, to find out that my illness had no cure, and studying at a school where I felt horrible. I had to learn that I am responsible for handling my emotions, my mindset, my choices, and my actions. Life gives us the cards, and we choose how to play them. Taking responsibility for our current situation is vital to find happiness.


“If you don’t have sex with obese people you are fatphobic” I don’t know if any of you have experienced this…but bisexuals, homosexuals, and asexuals know that their sexuality can’t be changed because they probably have tried to fit in or avoid issues at some point. Sexual attraction is not a choice. Phrases such as that one or “if you don’t date trans people you’re transphobic” are abusive and rapish. You can’t control who you’re attracted to, it’s a combination of psychological and biological factors most of us are not even aware of. Another way to show fatphobia according to their movement is to actively try to lose weight. A lot of people need to lose or gain weight to save their lives, so why attack them? As long as you’re not hurting yourself while getting to that goal there’s nothing wrong with that.


Finally, there’s a last critique I would give the body positivity movement, the fat acceptance movement, and current “social justice”. Where are the men? Where are amputees, burn marks victims, people with skin issues, and disabled people? Everyone is praising Disney for making Ariel black…when Gabriella, a brown deaf mermaid, could have gotten her moment to shine. These movements claim to be kind, but they don’t really seem to care about helping others or giving everyone a spot to shine. These movements are shallow, selfish, and people are following them without analyzing whether they are truly positive or not. Men suffer from eating disorders, but they are rarely told they are handsome too. Diet culture? What about obesity culture? The amount of obesity raising rates and unhealthy food out there is troublesome. Complex issues require complex solutions, not a hashtag or a TikTok video shouting at everyone who disagrees with you.


In conclusion, I would like body positivity to be shown as: love your body by taking care of yourself and your health, include more elderly people in fashion, show more disabled people in fashion and media, and to truly include everyone in a kind manner regardless of how they look (yes, even traditionally beautiful people because they also deserve to love their bodies or have insecurities).





I hope you enjoyed reading this or at least it made you think! Thank you for being here. Like, share, and comment if you want to read more posts like this one.


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