Body Positivism is bad!?

It has been always asked if body positivism is increasing the confidence level or the health hazard level and is being the most debated question among body positive people and the rest till date. There are people who think that no matter how body positive you are, massive obesity is still an issue which could lead to serious illnesses and death. One of the major causes of diabetes is obesity and with that comes heart diseases, high blood pressure, and other obesity related chronic illnesses. Being all ‘body positive’ is an excuse for obesity, an excuse from getting a healthy lifestyle, hide their fat stuff behind body positivism. Agreed that you don’t get fat by healthy eating or lifestyle, we get fat by indulging in overeating, laziness, junk food etc. But body positivism isn’t about being obese or obese people hiding behind this, it is often misunderstood that, when a super obese person is body positive, they are often misunderstood as promoting obesity.

Body positivism is about self confidence and self acceptance, it is about wholeheartedly accepting who you are or what you are or however you are. It doesn’t mean that unhealthy lifestyle and food habits are being promoted. Body positivism doesn’t mislead to any of that, it is all about inner happiness, acceptance.

The fashion industry’s emphasis on looking perfect got over everyone’s head day by day after endless campaigns of slender models walking ramps, featuring in magazines, and with the over usage of photoshop and airbrushing

influencing most of the minds to not be happy with their body. People start putting more and more effort in changing their bodies till they reach the desired level of perfection in their minds. Woman and girls, started hating the way they generally look and trying their best to start looking like someone else. This is where body positivism takes a major role. It is not about obesity or unhealthy eating or lifestyle, it is about feeling happy the way you are, loving yourself, loving your body, caring for yourself and your body. Like I always say, Never exercise because you want your body to look like someone else’s, but exercise because you want your body to be healthy. Body positivism is just a button to stop the self loathing and self hatred. It is just a flip switch towards a happy positive life. Fair enough to say, body positive tells you to count your blessings than your troubles, and that’s what all it is about. But often people get into the illusion that body positive feminists are only promoting unhealthy lifestyle which is worse than the self loathing part. The main act of this movement was to destroy the negativity and the ill construct idea of defined beauty, but the contradictory arguers only get to the negative part than focusing on encouraging people. ‘Then why are these so called body positive fat people not making enough effort to get fit?’ you may ask, ‘are we encouraging enough in the right way, taking this  towards the proper direction?’ I ask. Instead of normalizing all types of bodies, the

society and the industry have only divided the bodies into two separate groups. The one group where the envious Victorian angels with loads of photoshop, airbrushed bodies are and the other plus size who are featured only in plus size campaigns with all their ‘flaws’ highlighted to show their brave positive nature. Can you see now how unfair and not right it is? All this only makes it harder to achieve what is really needed in this world of fake intentions. Remember the next time you want to match some standard of the beauty industry, they only profit from feeding on other peoples insecurities. If the beauty industry told people that they are perfect the way they are, how will they sell their products which will get you younger slimmer and better. And that’s not going to stop ever, or else they would go out of business, but what we can do is to stop matching their standards, stop trying to perfect your-self, stop looking for validation from others about your-self.

A real body-positive believer, neither promotes being fat or being thin. He or she doesn’t believe in fat shaming or skinny shaming. Body positivism has a wide spectrum of people ranging from short to tall, thin to fat, muscular to non muscular, males and females.

A real body positive person is happy with the way he or she looks, his or her body appearance doesn't add value to his self worth, he or she eats right because of the need to be healthy. He or she works out to be fit, healthy body, to feel good. Not to put the body through hell to achieve those round bums or the sexy abs. So let go of the black and white thinking, love yourself, admire yourself and care for yourself. Don’t try to fit the idea of somebody else’s perfect, just believe that you are perfect the way you are and make sure you lead a clean healthy happy life. And No, body positivism is not bad!