Negativity of Body Positive

Lets be very clear… accepting yourself is job 1. I am a firm believer of understanding who you are, and accepting that only your opinion matters.

Now that I have qualified my point with understanding, I am going to say something that may not sit well… I feel the Body Positive movement is extremely dangerous to the health of people.

I am not saying its bad… the intent is great. I am saying its dangerous. I see “body positive”being  used in a negative way too.

What Body Positive IS…

Judging yourself in regards to your personal character… and not basing your sense of self worth on your physical appearance.

What Body Positive ISN’T

An excuse to allow yourself to give up on your health.

Redefining what is beautiful and what is seen is “beautiful”… is important. There isn’t one universal standard of beauty, and trying to make one view of what is “beautiful” does harm in many ways.

1)      People outside of the societal definition of “attractive” can struggle with identity and self worth issues.

2)      People who are not attracted to the “standard” can develop complexes based around being separated from what is viewed as the “norm”.

I had this conversation with a woman at the gym yesterday, and she was part of a much bigger experimental conversation than she knew she was having. In fact, I didn’t realize what I was doing, or why I was doing it, until it was done.  This woman is by all traditional main stream standards “beautiful”. She is strong, independent, intelligent, and possesses physical features that she has worked hard to maintain and create. She is smart, attractive and hard working… she was probably the woman who ignored us at lunch in high school, but as an adult she is super fucking cool and fun to talk to. She is a better looking Mary Louise Parker. Our gym has a seating area out front with a small fire place. Both of us had a few minutes to kill after our workouts, and before returning to our day to day duties, so we took a few minutes to chat about the high school style drama that takes place with our friends at the gym.. and rehashing previous funny convos. At some point she mentioned that she wants to set one of her friends up with a guy at the gym, and she was trying to take creeper pics of him to pass along to her friend. The gentleman in question is very handsome… he is very athletic and in amazing shape. He is what I am hoping my “after” pics will be. When I told her this, she mentioned that she isn’t attracted to him… not that he isn’t attractive, but that she prefers dudes who are taller and pale and have a less chiseled body. This got us talking about the differences in what is and isn’t attractive to each person. Being the piece of shit arrogant child that I am, I decided to point at random dudes that walked in and see whether or not she found them attractive. I was purposely picking men I thought fit a standard definition of “handsome”, but did NOT match the definition she gave me of her type. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I felt she was lying to me. My instinct was to think she was skewing the truth so as not to hurt my feelings, which is a very narcissistic view of a conversation, but one I believe most of us have. How could I not compare her words to me… its human nature. I felt she was saying she didn’t find super fit men as attractive, because she didn’t want to hurt the fat kids feelings. Even though she was clearly not referencing me in anyway, and her definitions of what she found to be “beautiful” were meant for her… not me. But I would point to men that  I assumed to possess what women felt was attractive, and one by one she shot them all down. It became clear to me that my perceptions where born in my insecurities. My neurosis were monsters of my own design. Most of my issues with self esteem and appearance were born from definitions I created and then projected on to other people. At some point in my life I decided that all women wanted to be with chiseled men, all these men had to be 6’2”, and if you don’t have a gorgeous head of hair.. just kill yourself. I was projecting my preconceived notions and bias on to the women of the world, and then thinking less of them for having those opinions. My psyche is a fucked up maze of idiocy. I lost hours of my day to contemplating how, regardless of your appearance you are someones “type”, and then it hit me… IT DOESN’T FUCKING MATTER… My value isn’t determined by my appearance at all. I am using the wrong map to guide my journey. I need to be allowing my health and physical comfort to guide my journey. I was falling victim to the trap of the dangerous side of “body positive”… I was trying to change my definition of what is attractive, instead of working to lessen the importance I put on appearance. OK OK.. it’s a bit disingenuous to say “It hit me”… truth is, Mary Louise Parker Jr told me “its hard to tell how attractive any of these guys are until I talk to them… what if they are a moron, or a dick, or lack confidence”… this is when I had the ah ha moment usually reserved for 15-16 year olds “MAYBE WE SHOUDLNT JUDGE BOOKS BY THEIR COVERS, IS ACTUALLY A METAPHOR FOR NOT JUDGING  PEOPLE BY HOW THEY LOOK”…

Maybe our self worth shouldn’t be wrapped up in how we look, but in who we are. Our physical presence should be defined by “physical health” and not “physical appearance”. Being fat is ok… allowing yourself to be unhealthy to avoid the work involved in improving your health isn’t. Feeling attractive regardless of shape, and loving yourself, is absolutely necessary. However, using this to excuse poor health is NOT OK. Allowing yourself to be unhealthy because you are comfortable with how you look, is still defining your self worth by your appearance. Just because your definition of “beautiful” is more inclusive and realistic, doesn’t mean it should be used to validate your value. Its still a superficial value system.

If I couldn’t read, I wouldn’t just change the value I hold on reading and claim that I am “illiterate positive” and scold people for “idiot shaming” me.

If I had cancer, I wouldn’t claim I am “malignant positive” and scold people for “tumor shame”…

So being obese shouldn’t be rebranded as “body positive” so we can stay in our unhealthy comfort zones and fail to progress our health. It needs to be part of a bigger journey of self acceptance.

Obesity is killing you. Killing me. Associating weight to physical appearance is missing the point of why we should have an emphasis on getting in shape.

There is no question that people are developing unhealthy obsessions around eating. Depression is very real and can absolutely be triggered by a lack of feeling value due to not fitting in to the standards of beauty. But the answer isn’t just to change the definition of “beauty”, the answer is to change the importance we place on the definition… and who we allow to define us. I think “body positive” is a dangerous, and important idea. Over simplifying “body positive” to just cover physical appearance is every bit as harmful as allowing narrow definitions of what is beautiful.

My new definition of body positive is:

Accepting who you are, and removing the value we put on physical beauty, while we work to meet our own personal standards of worth.

              Step 1: Acknowledge that your self worth is not defined by your appearance

              Step 2: Decide the values and measures that you want to use to judge your worth against (morals, values, strength of character)

              Step 3: Work to be the person you want to be, and be the healthiest you possible

(notice that at no point did I include allowing other peoples definitions or opinions dictate your value)

If you can’t read, learn. If you have cancer, seek medical help. If you are obese, fight to improve your health. And do all of this with the knowledge that you can be an amazing person while still working to improve yourself.

Medical, mental, and physical issues play no part in defining us… the way in which we work to overcome these issues does. It isn’t just about redefining what is “beautiful”… its also about disconnecting our self worth from our physical appearance. And people judging your based on your appearance, says more about them than it does you. But using the fact that you are comfortable in your own skin, to not remedy the fact that you’re obese, is missing the whole point. Obesity leads to heart disease, diabetes, structural support issues, some forms of cancer. It is hard to be change the current course your body is on, and to repair your health, but it is necessary. The removing of the stigma of being overweight can not become something you use to allow yourself to continue being unhealthy. I so often confuse the message in my own brain. I dwell in what is attractive, and trying to feel value in spite of my own perceived inadequacies, but I lose sight of the two main points of why I am doing this… regain my health, live up to the definitions of what I want to be. Allowing “beauty” or “appearance” to be a major factor in this journey is shallow and vapid, regardless of my definitions of what is “attractive”. This is about my physical and mental health… I define every aspect of this process, and my opinion is the only one that matters. I am not living the life I intended. I am not fulfilling my potential as I see it.

“Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined” – Toni Morrison