Body Neutrality: How Do I Accept My Fat Body? READY FOR REVIEW
Photo: Leonard Nimoy
Everyone’s heard of body positivity, but what about body neutrality?
What’s Up with Body Positivity?
Body positivity originates from a grassroots movement in the 1960s fighting for fat liberation. These activists showed that bigger people were discriminated against. This included at work, healthcare, and in education.
They were on a mission to end fat shaming.
Enter social media. Instagram, Youtube, Facebook. This radical movement began to shift from a niche movement to the mainstream.
Larger people were no longer the focus. Instead, body positivity included everyone stating that we should all love our bodies.
This watered down movement sounds good if everyone’s included, right?
Wrong. Bye.
As everyone made a claim to body positivity, the voices of fat people were silenced.
Lifestyle blogger Stephanie Yeboah argues that body positivity no longer speaks for fat people. And especially women of colour, trans women, and women with disabilities. They’ve been pushed aside for people who are more “conventionally beautiful”.
“Now, in order to be body positive, you have to be acceptably fat — size 16 and under, or white, or very pretty. It’s not a movement that I feel represents me any more.”
Stephanie Yeboah, Lifestyle Blogger
What About Body Neutrality?
Influencers like Stephanie Yeboah have started shifting from body positivity to something else: ‘body neutrality’, ‘fat acceptance’ or ‘fat liberation’.
Body positivity tells us to love ourselves. But what if that’s too difficult?
Well you may want to try body neutrality. This is when you feel neutral about your body. You don’t have to always love it, but instead accept and respect it.
Some days it may be super hard to love your body. And that’s totally okay!
It seems forced to pretend to love your body. So guess what? You don’t have to.
Steps to Body Neutrality
This all sounds great, but how do you actually do it? Here’s some tips:
- Accept your body for what it is. You don’t need to hate it or love it, but try and respect your body.
- Reject that being fat is bad. Fat is a neutral word to describe some people’s bodies.
- Fat does not mean ugly, unhealthy, or a failure.
- Showing off your fat body in a bikini is not “brave”. It’s just your body.
- FYI: You can be happy and fat.
You may find it hard to accept your body. That’s totally okay!
I recommend following fat activists and body liberation bloggers. They normalize and celebrate fat bodies. And they’re super helpful in unlearning all the fatphobic ideas we’ve been taught our whole lives.
A bunch of my faves are Stephanie Yeboah, Ashleigh Nicole Tribble, Megan Jayne Crabb, Meg Boggs, Sofie Hagen, La Keisha, effyourbeautystandards, and Dani Adriana.
Be easy on yourself. And hopefully over time you’ll learn to make peace with your body.
