The Superficial Nature of Body Positivity
How Activism Became Profitable
Hey Friends, it’s Kayla your Fat Positive Therapist! Today we are diving into Body Positivity and how capitalism, instagram and thin white women turned activism into profit.
Body positivity made its debut in the 1960s, headed by black, fat, disabled & queer individuals, with the goal of combating anti-fatness and body discrimination.
Today Body Positivity is a shell of the original movements intention, now saturated by thin white women selling their idea of body acceptance. Activism that started with brave fat people protesting abuse of fat bodies ultimately shifted to the normalization of “mid size bodies”. Creating space for more white women to feel validated while continuing to stigmatize and shame fat bodies. What led to the deconstruction of a potentially powerful movement? How did we lose the plot? Shocker. Capitalism.
You see, body dissatisfaction plagues us ALL. Capitalism joined forces with anti-blackness creating the love child that is diet culture and the “thin white ideal”. These expectations of the body were fed to everyone with access to a television, radio or westernized religion. Leaving all of us exhausted from self hatred. Creating dangerous circumstances for anyone that exist in vulnerable populations. After decades of self hatred and dangerous medical practices the introduction to social media based Body Positivity came as a breath of fresh air. Who could deny the importance of self acceptance. We were dying to finally stop hating ourselves and instagram gave us just enough hope to draw us in!
I will not pretend that the Body Positivity instagram movement of 2012 didn’t act as a stepping stone into my understanding of fat liberation. I KNOW! How can I be this judgmental about a movement that was helpful? That’s where this rant becomes incredibly humbling and human. We are ALL socialized to hate fat bodies, even if you are living in a fat body. Listening to conventionally attractive women preach body positivity can be easier to digest in the beginning. I hate that I had felt this way but it’s the honest truth.
We cannot deny that some of us need to be guided through the shallow end before we can brave deeper waters. While others have no choice but to be thrown into the deep end without consent. The point is not to shame the individual journey but to shine a light on the restructuring of a movement to make it more sellable. With the sudden uptick interest in Body Love, influencers were dropping self love classes and books by the hundreds. We ate that shit up. Wanting so badly to have the perceived freedom of that size 8 white lady showing off her “belly rolls”.
This critique is not intended to dissuade anyone from starting their journey with body positivity. Being raised in an individualistic society does make us focus on our own personal growth. Unfortunately, individualistic self love does not extend to the fat and disabled community members whose life depended on continued activism within Body Positivity. The white women gaining thousands of followers and income off of this movement effectively leaving out the very people who needed this the most. The new narrative becoming “this body is good but don’t get too fat”. Still maintaining the body hierarchy of western values.
Understanding this pattern is essential to understanding the larger beast. Capitalism and white supremacy does not want you to like yourself. Liking yourself is dangerous to their profit margins. How can they expect you to spend money on various beauty concoctions if you still didn’t harbor some self hatred. The powers that be created a sense of freedom, profiting off of body positivity while simultaneously maintaining rules around what bodies were still acceptable. Discouraging fat bodies from being involved in campaigns, punishing influencers that tried to include diversity. Let’s be honest some creators never tried to include diverse bodies. Riding that thin privilege straight to the bank.
Which leaves us with our current understanding of Body Positivity. Watered down, repackaged and stripped of all political and systemic meaning. We cannot heal body dissatisfaction alone. Understanding who gains from our self hatred and whose in charge of creating these values is essential to body liberation. Centering our most vulnerable will lift us all.
