What Is Body Positivity?

Body positivity refers to the assertion that all people deserve a positive body image, regardless of how society and popular culture view ideal shape, size, and appearance. It involves loving your body and feeling good about how it looks.

Keep reading to learn more about body positivity, including what it means, its goals, how it turned into a movement, its benefits, and criticisms. We also share how to feel more positive about your body, which helps support a healthy body image.

What Body Positivity Means

While body positivity has become increasingly popular, people are often confused about exactly what it means. Part of the reason it is so misunderstood is that it has so many different definitions.

 Depending on who you ask, body positivity can mean:

• Appreciating your body despite your perceived flaws
• Feeling confident about your body
• Loving your body
• Accepting your body’s shape and size

Body Positivity Goals

Some of the goals of body positivity include:

• Challenging how society views the body
• Promoting the love and acceptance of all bodies
• Helping people build confidence in and acceptance of their bodies
• Addressing unrealistic body standards

Body positivity is not just about challenging how society views people based on their physical size and shape, however. It also recognizes that judgments are often made based on a person's race, gender, sexuality, and disability. 

Another goal of body positivity is to help people understand how the media contributes to people's relationships with their bodies, including how they feel about food, exercise, clothing, health, identity, and self-care. By better understanding the effect these influences have, the hope is that people can develop a healthier and more realistic relationship.

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The Body Positivity Movement

Body positivity is rooted in the "fat acceptance movement" of the late 1960s. The focus of this movement was on ending the culture of fat shaming and discrimination against people based on their size or body weight. The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance was established in 1969 and continues to work to change how people talk about weight.

In the mid-1990s, the term "body positive" emerged, when a psychotherapist and an individual formerly treated for an eating disorder founded the website thebodypositive.org. This site offers resources and educational materials designed to help people feel good about their bodies by taking the focus off of losing weight through unhealthy diet and exercise efforts.

Around 2012, the body positivity movement began to emerge in its current form. It initially challenged unrealistic feminine beauty standards. As the movement grew, the idea of weight acceptance began to shift toward a message that “all bodies are beautiful." Instagram played a pivotal role in this movement's growing popularity.

The impact of body positivity can be seen in several ways. Some magazines have stopped airbrushing or photo editing models, for instance, while companies such as Dove and Aerie have developed marketing campaigns incorporating body positivity messages.

Benefits of Body Positivity

Body positivity strives to help people develop a healthy body image. A person's body image—which is a subjective perception of one's own body—may be different from how their body actually appears. This can lead to feelings, thoughts, and behaviors that impact their mental health and how they treat themselves.

Research suggests that having a positive body image is associated with a reduced risk of depression, higher self-esteem, and fewer dieting behaviors. Body image also plays a role in how people feel about their appearance and how they judge their self-worth.

Conversely, problems can emerge as a result of poor body image, including:

• Depression: Women experience depression at much higher rates than men, and some researchers believe that body dissatisfaction may play an important role in explaining this gender difference in depression rates.
• Low self-esteem: Research has found that body dissatisfaction is associated with poor self-esteem in adolescents, also increasing their risk of depression and anxiety.  
• Eating disorders: Research also indicates that body dissatisfaction is linked to disordered eating, particularly among adolescent girls. 

Research has consistently shown that the media contributes to body dissatisfaction. It is not just exposure to "ideal" body images that pose a danger; it is the development of beliefs that beauty, success, and esteem are determined by thinness.

Body positivity hopes to address these issues by helping people recognize the influences contributing to poor body image. The hope is that people will then be able to adjust their body expectations and feel more positive and accepting of their own bodies. Such acceptance may then help combat the toll that poor body image has on their health.

Criticisms of Body Positivity

While the body positivity message is intended to help people feel better about themselves, it isn’t without its problems and critics. For example, one problem is the idea that body positivity implies that people should do whatever they think they need to do to feel positive about how they look.

Unfortunately, the popular messages that people are bombarded with include the idea that thinner, fitter people are happier, healthier, and more beautiful. This idealization of thinness can then contribute to people engaging in unhealthy actions—including excessive exercise or extreme diets—under the guise of feeling "body positive."

Another criticism of body positivity is that it can be non-inclusive. Depictions of body positivity messages tend to exclude people of color as well as those who are disabled or part of the LGBTQ+ community.

Another criticism of the body positivity trend is that it makes the appearance of the body one of the most important elements of a person’s self-perception. It neglects all the other elements of a person’s identity that are more important than how a person looks.

How to Improve Your Body Positivity

Body positivity is designed to foster acceptance and love of your body, but it can be a struggle that adds another element of pressure and impossible standards to live up to. So what can you do to maintain a healthy body image?

Be Realistic

Telling people to ignore the dominant beauty ideal isn’t realistic. This can also create more pressure for a person who is already feeling anxious, negative, and devalued. 

Instead, recognize that although an "ideal" body image exists, this doesn't mean that you have to subscribe to it. You still have value and worth, no matter your body shape and size.

Replace Negative Thought Patterns

Repeating positive affirmations you don't believe in can backfire. It may even leave you feeling worse about yourself than you did before.

This doesn't mean that you shouldn't say nice things or think positive thoughts about yourself. But a better approach would be to work on replacing negative thought patterns with more realistic ones.

Adopt Body Neutrality

It’s okay to admit that you don’t necessarily love everything about your body. It’s also okay to feel neutral or even indifferent. Your worth and value do not lie in your shape, size, or in any other aspect of your appearance. Body image does play a part in self-concept, but it isn’t everything.

Admittedly, this isn't always easy. There will be moments when you feel weak, dislike aspects of yourself, and compare yourself to others. The key is to keep trying to find new ways to avoid the negative thought patterns that contribute to poor body image.

Try Health-Focused Self-Care

Self-care strategies can sometimes masquerade as a way to change or control your appearance. However, they should focus on doing things that make you feel good about the body you have now.

Show respect for your body. Eat healthy meals because it fuels your mind and body. Exercise because it helps you feel strong and energized, not because you're trying to change or control your body.

Feel Good In Your Clothes

Wear and buy clothes for the body you have now—not for some planned future version of yourself. You might be holding onto your “thin clothes” because you plan to eventually lose weight, but such habits can make it hard to feel good about yourself today.

Look for things that make you feel comfortable and good about how you look. Purge your closet of clothes that don't fit your current physique. Your body may change in size and shape in the future, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be able to look and feel good about yourself in the here and now.

Purge Your Social Media

Purge your social media feeds of accounts that don’t make you feel good about yourself. If you find yourself constantly comparing yourself to others, you’re less likely to feel good about yourself.

Follow accounts that spark your interests and that leave you with positive feelings. Try following body-positive accounts that are inclusive of all body types, shapes, colors, genders, and abilities.

Takeaways

Fortunately, body dissatisfaction may be on the decline. However, there are still several things you can do to feel more positive about your body, leading to a healthier body image and even a happier life.