By Sahara Douglas
Over the past few years, you may have noticed more and more discussion about body positivity and body neutrality on social media. Despite the relatively recent rise of these movements, fat activism and body acceptance movements began in the late 60s, particularly with the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) and the Fat Liberation. Although, these early movements excluded BIPOC voices, body positivity today has been predominantly amplified by BIPOC fat women and genderqueer people such as @stephanieyeboah and @meganjaynecrabbe, especially on social media platforms like Instagram and Tumblr. Despite the fact that BIPOC and genderqueer people were left out of the body positive movements in the early days, it is these folks to whom we owe our thanks for rejuvenating body positivity and body neutrality in the 2010s. It is these folks who spread the notion of radical body acceptance, particularly for marginalized bodies.
So what are body positivity and body neutrality?
Well, body positivity is the idea that bodies falling outside the “norm” deserve love and acceptance too; regardless of what our bodies look like, we should love them. It was initially a movement in which marginalized folks—predominantly fat BIPOC women and genderqueer people—could discuss how their identities prevented them from participating fully in society. Body positivity created a space where people could discuss fat acceptance, thin privilege, diet culture, and fatphobia in the medical community and how these issues affected them in their marginalized bodies.
Body neutrality, on the other hand, is the idea that what your body looks like is neither positive nor negative—it’s just the thing that gets you through life. Body neutrality makes space for individuals who acknowledge that people’s relationships with their bodies are more complicated than body positivity allows for. For instance, folks with disabilities felt excluded by the body positive movement because messages such as “your body never fails you” weren’t true for them, and made them feel even more marginalized. They wanted a space where they could acknowledge the desire for body acceptance but did not necessarily feel like they could love their bodies completely.
In the past few years, body acceptance movements have been and continue to be co-opted by social media influencers and corporations, diluting their initial messages. In a BBC interview, @gracefvictory, a body positivity advocate with a large following on Instagram, discussed what body positivity meant to her when she first discovered it: She speaks about how body positivity no longer serves her in the way it used to because it has become filled with people whose bodies are already widely accepted by society and fit the societal norm.
It goes without saying that self-love is for everyone, and everyone deserves to reclaim their relationships with their bodies. But while seeing more body positive and body neutral content in mainstream spaces is great, it’s important to make sure that we don’t encourage influencers and corporations to take over the body positivity and body neutrality spaces simply for profit, thereby pushing out the very people we owe for these movements in the first place. To keep these movements authentic, let’s make sure to uplift the voices who spoke radical body acceptance into existence. Let’s look to the fat, BIPOC, women, and genderqueer people who give us that body positive and body neutral space instead of seeking it out in others who are using this messaging for profit. Let’s not forget to thank the fat BIPOC women and genderqueer people who paved the way for us to, if not fully love our bodies, at least accept them.
For more resources on body positivity and body neutrality, take a look at these folks and materials:
@meganjaynecrabbe and her book: Body Positive Power
@stephanieyeboah and her book: Fattily Ever After: A Fat Black Girl’s Guide to Living Life Unapologetically
@scarrednotscared and her book: Am I Ugly? One Woman’s Journey to Body Positivity
This was a very interesting read! Thanks for this Sahara:)