It can be difficult to love how we look, love the shape of our body, our current weight, or natural hair color. It is often easy to compare ourselves to our favorite celebrities, models in fashion and beauty magazines and their photoshopped pictures , all of which can make us feel inadequate. However, the way we view ourselves has begin to shift with more focus on the body positivity movement. This movement focuses on loving all bodies, shapes, sizes , colors, genders, and abilities. Another movement that is becoming more prominent is body neutrality which focuses on appreciating what the body can do, not the appearance. 

Let’s talk about both movements and how these viewpoints can allow us to make peace with our bodies.

Body positivity

Body positivity aims to encourage people to expand their mindset into acceptance, love, and embrace for all body shapes and sizes. No matter how you look, what your hair color is, your sex, and the color of your skin, people behind this movement are encouraging and advocating for the extermination of unrealistic beauty standards. Beauty standards are formed and shaped per culture, country, and society. These can closely tie into how someone views themselves, and deems their value and worth. If a society endorses someone tall, thin, and blonde as the ideal beauty, people who don’t fall into that narrow category can feel depressed, anxious, and ugly. Peers may also bully and shame someone for not trying their hardest to live up to that ideal and the cycle is reinforced and continued. 

People of larger bodies have struggled for a long time to be accepted, and have formed movements, advocating to increase acceptance. Body positivity focuses on similar frameworks such as reducing fatphobia. People who are of larger bodies can experience significant harassment, shame, and bullying according to their size. This feedback can further fuel someone into unhealthy weight loss habits that can put someone at risk for developing an eating disorder. 

Despite the intentions behind this movement, people criticize the exclusion of all beauty from other minority communities such as LGBTQIA+. Beyond this, body positivity can still be unrealistic in the sense that to some people, unconditionally loving yourself can be a difficult concept if you dislike yourself. There is a lot of influence of how beauty standards form and are shaped and reinforced, that regardless of this movement to embrace your beauty and appearance, you can feel disconnected to truly incorporate this for yourself and genuinely feel that towards yourself. 

Body Neutrality

Body neutrality isn’t solely focused on appearance, nor does it mean you have to deal with your disdain for your body all the time either. There is a happier medium between both extremes and a better compromise between body positivity and negative body image. This movement takes appearance entirely out of the picture. Body neutrality endorses that you build your love, appreciation, and gratitude for your body based on what it can do for you, how it functions, and focusing on feeling more neutral and ambivalent about our bodies. This can help build better and healthier relationships that are more controlled and balanced with food and exercise, not drastic all-or-nothing mindsets built on transactions and black-or-white thinking of ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Sometimes we can fall into the mindsets of ‘I am beautiful’ or ‘I am ugly’ with no in-between. Patterns such as “If we aren’t a certain number on the scale, we are ugly or worthless or if we are a certain weight then we are beautiful and valuable and desirable to others,” are unhealthy mindsets that can have a negative impact on our wellbeing.

Your appearance does not have to be the only thing that decides how valuable you are. Trying to change that or control it in unhealthy ways like dieting and excessive exercise is harmful. If it becomes something on your mind for most of the day, negative body image may be something you struggle with. Body neutrality is a way to view and love yourself differently that takes appearance out of the equation and helps you find other ways to love yourself and find happiness within yourself. 

Which movement do you connect with more? Perhaps both? It all comes down to your preference and how you feel about your body. If you struggle to find ways to connect to one of these movements, or you find yourself engaging in more negative thinking about your body, click here for support.