The Marketing Bestie Podcast with zoeunlimited - body positivity OR toxicity?

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

Is the body positivity movement actually positive or toxic? You make the call. //🕙Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 1:28 What is the body positivity movement 3:12 Self improvement vs self acceptance dilemma 6:22 Overgeneralization/ exclusion of other body types 8:44 Restrictive positivity & body neutrality Glow up with me mentally and physically. 💜 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zoeunlimited/ 💛TikTok: http://www.tiktok.com/@zoeunlimited 📧 Business inquiries: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I am not celebrating more. That's what you're doing. Seeing someone like me on the cover of like a glossy magazine shouldn't be top news. Britain battles an ever-w worsening obesity crisis. Like you guys need to wake up. My health is no one's business. There's nothing in my mind. commendable. I mean, what's brave about, you know, eating ice cream?

Because they're hearing love yourself from someone who happens to exist in a fat body. What do you think about? Look that face, too. You're not helping. He accused you of celebrating morbid obesity and branded the cover dangerous. When you put a morbidly obese person on a magazine and glorify it, that's just as unhealthy as anorexia. Oh, great. A video on a hypersensitive topic. As someone who grew out of and into a lot of different insecurities with my body, I've always been very supportive of the body positive movement, but...

Recently, I dug deeper into the body positive movement, and boy, are there a lot of problematic things beneath the surface. I know. Surprising how something negative could be associated with something called blah-blah positivity. So let's take a dive into what is body positivity? The self-improvement versus self-acceptance dilemma. the overgeneralization and exclusion of other body types as well as how positivity can become restrictively unhealthy and the alternative of body neutrality. The side look okay all right let's pull this down this is how I'm not pushing it out this is how my stomach is y'all this is what we're talking about what is the body positivity movement so the body positivity

movement first began with the Fats Right movement in 1969 by a New York engineer called Bill Fabry who was angry at how his wife was treated by the world to to her size. He gathered a small group of people and created the National Association to aid fat Americans. With the internet booming in the early 2000s, body shame and body love were widely spread and the term body positivity became more known. I'm not. Look at me. Not a flat stomach in sight.

But I'm hot, sexy, beautiful. Fuck that phobia. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Upgrade your business with Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. Shop pay boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning fewer cards going abandoned and more sales going chiching. So if you're into growing your business, get a commerce platform that's ready to sell wherever your customers are.

Shopify.com to upgrade your selling today. Body positivity in today's terms refers to the assertion that everyone deserves to have a positive body image. Regardless of societal and pulp culture's view on the ideal shape, size, and appearance, beyond physical size and shape, body positivity also recognizes judgments based on race, gender, sexuality, and disability. At a glance, it seems to be the perfect solution to all our self-image problems. So let's dig into why this can steer into the wrong direction. The self-improvement versus self-acceptance dilemma. Let's start with a premise of health at every size

which stems from body positivity and encompasses principles such as eat when you are hungry, stop when you're full, and seek out pleasurable and satisfying foods, but is fullness always accurate as the right amount of nutrition? Are long-term pleasurable and satisfying foods the right answer for your body? Can you be healthy at any size? Although I 100% agree that weight is not a holistic indicator of your health and wellness.

Weight and size are nevertheless indicators and predictors of our physical strength, cardiovascular health, and risk of certain diseases. This movement has received a lot of bad press for promoting obesity, which is not necessarily true either. It just does not promote weight loss as a health strategy, but rather focus on obesity. which I also agree because weight loss is just the byproduct of healthy habits. However, when icons known for their plus sizes are trying to lose weight or transform their body,

emphasis on their body, they receive a lot of backlashes of not being body positive or as hypocrites. For instance, there were a lot of dramatic and negative reactions to Adele's weight loss where those who supported her weight loss were considered fat, And Adele received a lot of hate just because she didn't belong to the plus size label anymore. But just as she stated, I was body positive then and I am body positive now. So there seems to be a lot of judgments around what constitutes as body positive, as if self-improvement and self-acceptance are completely mutually exclusive and cannot occur simultaneously. Or if you become fitter, leaner, healthier, you are no longer positive.

about your body because the rationale is why would you change a thing about something you already accept? Which sounds totally reasonable but is flawed because regardless of our actions or inactions, our bodies are constantly changing. There's foodies and then there's food whores and I am the fatter, the latter. Or Lizzo, who has become a role model for body positivity when on a juice glance and suddenly face an immense amount of backlash for promoting diet culture. When in reality, she was just trying to cleanse her gut after messing up her stomach. Quote, as a big girl, people just expect if you are doing something for health, you are doing

it for a dramatic weight loss and that is not the case. When a movement is supposed to embrace all body types but gave additional pressure to plus size people of what can be defined as positive, it seems to have gone a little bit overboard and is no longer for the benefit of health but for labels. The overgeneralization and exclusion of other body types. Are skinny people allowed to be body positive? While that seems to be a preposterous question, the reality is no, they usually are not, at least online. So does anyone else have a body shape where you appear slimmer at first, but you actually have these surprise wide hips out of nowhere that you can disguise in about any piece of clothing? And you're not

exactly thick so you don't know where you fit. Despite the body positivity movement crying for embracing all body types when skinny or tone people feel good about their bodies and celebrate by posting. In return, they receive a lot of hate about body shaming or promoting body dysmorphia. Fitness influencers like Chloe Tin for instance receive hate for promoting body dysmorphia. I didn't magically have this physique. I worked hard for it. The problem is that the vast majority of the female population will never look like a client and their inability to do so feels body dysmorphia

which is just making free workouts available to anyone trying to get fitter so when a plus-size person shows off their body they are being confident and an icon but when a skinny or fit person does the same thing they are being a show-off and rude something's just not adding up here feeling good about your body even when it's tone is not body shaming or promoting body dysmorphia. As something else that people rarely talk about is skinny shaming. If you happen to be surprised, this just shows how diverse and inclusive the body positivity movement truly is or isn't.

I could definitely go more in depth into this topic another time, but being skinny doesn't actually shield went away from shaming and attacks from others like being called enraxic and being assumed to have an eating disorder which are commonly found in the comments to my videos. Restrictive positivity how an overly positive tone diminishes the eps and flows of emotion. Let's talk about normal versus negativity. The excess of positivity in social media is known as toxic positivity. Toxic positivity refers to the idea of focusing only on the positive aspects of life while rejecting or dismissing negative emotions, which are part of human nature. We need to love ourselves at our own pace, not at the pace

that social media tells us to, not the pace that a positivity movement pressures us to. So during those times that we don't feel 100% positive about our bodies, which isn't necessarily abnormal. We don't feel ashamed or guilty and that's where body neutrality comes in. Body neutrality emphasizes what your body can do instead of solely on the appearance. It's the idea that you can exist without having to think too much about your body one way or another, positive or negative, that it is all right to feel good about it one day and not too good another and you can accept your body as it is even when you don't exactly love it and most importantly shifts the emphasis away to attributes in addition to the appearances of the body so I hope

you enjoyed this video there were definitely a lot of things to wrap my thoughts around and I'd love to learn about your opinions on body positivity and body neutrality in the comment section don't forget to like and subscribe and follow me on Instagram to join my rope journey and I will see you next week. Bye.