Writing Sample: Body Neutrality — An Alternative to Negative (and Positive) Pressure
In the 1960s, Fats Rights activists sparked the modern Body Positivity movement. The term “body positive” wouldn’t be used until the 1990s with the creation of the site “thebodypositive.org,” which sought to provide resources around feeling good about our bodies without the emphasis on weight loss and dieting.
Around 2015, the term “body neutrality” popped up. What does it mean and how is it different from body positivity?
Body neutrality focuses on what the body does and how it feels as opposed to how it looks. Many industries — including but not limited to fashion, fitness, dieting — manufacture a specific, narrow range of body types to strive for. Anything outside of that is either shamed and/or not accommodated. The fat acceptance and body positive movements worked to counteract this harmful, negative messaging. And in the age of social media, the movement has thrived — the #bodypositive hashtag is currently associated with 14.7 million posts on Instagram.
However, this shift perhaps pushed the pendulum too far in the opposite direction.
Body positivity still often focuses on appearance and accepting who we are on the outside. That is not always attainable for everyone and after a while, some folks began to feel a tension between negative and positive pressures with regard to how they were supposed to think about their bodies.
Enter the neutrality portion.
Instead of focusing on outward appearances, body neutrality seeks to look inward. What does my body do for me? What does my body feel? In practicing this mindset, folks can work toward freeing themselves from having to hate or love their body. Their body can simply be.
For some, body neutrality is a safe haven, a destination. For others, it is a stepping stone toward more full-on body acceptance — and even liberation.
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