You can’t spend your whole life looking at your body, noticing and obsessing over its “flaws”, and in the same breath start being “body positive” and love what you’re used to hate. If you want to inhabit your body, which is the only way you can free your mind from beauty obsession, you gotta stop looking at it from an aesthetic point of view. Acknowledge how your joints work. How muscles stretch and how your intestines keep you alive with those incredibly complex mechanisms. But don’t look at your chubby stomach, that everyone and everything made you hate, and try to be “body positive” and see how attractive it can be. Hating and loving your body appearance following aesthetic criteria are the two faces of the same coin: it’s the same logic that makes you see yourself – because you are your body, among other things – as a merchandise. And it doesn’t matter you’re “body positive” and see it as a “masterpiece” instead of a merchandise, because you still are objectifying yourself. So look at your body, and try not to judge it. It’s hard, and a long process, that goes against the very way our society works – but i can assure you it’s worth it. And one day you’ll stop thinking about the way your body looks, and you’ll feel free.
The body positivity movement could have been very powerful and threatening to the beauty industry, but it soon obsessed over “attractive flaws” and how you can be “sexy even if you’re fat”. It could have helped women unlearn the toxic relationship with our, and other women’s bodies, we’re taught to have. It could have helped us realize what self-objectification is, how it works & how detrimental it is for our mental health and sense of self-worth, and then show us how to dismantle this thought process while being attentive to other’s struggles with body image. We could have made a strong community of women helping each other, acknowledging the way sexism works toward fat, disabled, trans, non-white women.
But instead, we have this new brand of “love yourself! You look good! And you know what will make you look even better? This specific beauty product or these clothes we designed specifically for women who love themselves like you! Buy! Buy our things! Our products are made for strong women who believe in themselves! If you’re strong buy it! It’s an evidence of your strength!”
And it doesn’t make any difference, except that now, there are women who hate themselves for not being “strong” of “woke” because they struggle with their body image.
So yeah, be “body positive”: have a positive relationship to your body, but don’t root it in attractiveness and how appealing to the male gaze you are or believe to be.
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