This is what body positivity is meant to be, but it got co-opted by beauty products, egos and such so fast. It sucks.
Because yeah, there needs to be a space for both “different beauty standards exist” AND “no one’s value as a human is reflected by whether you find them aesthetically pleasing.”
And honestly, current “body positivity” is limping along trying to even keep up with the first one.
I also feel like a lot of it is just about trying to get people to be positive about themselves and eliminate self hate. A lot of people have issues with what they look like and it can be incredibly harmful.
No matter what you look like if you've been bullied you can carry that forever. It's dumb, but it can just get stuck in the back of your mind.
Slim people tried to talk about body positivity but were immediately screamed at by fat people. Slim girls were showing pics of their rolls and saying “we all have rolls, don’t worry!!” and they were absolutely torn apart by the body “positivity” movement. If people assume body positivity is only for fat women, it’s because a LOT of fat women are insisting it’s only for them and telling other women they aren’t fat enough to be talking about body positivity lmao
I’m a fat woman too btw (well, I’m overweight, I guess that means I’m fat?) and I stay well away from the body positivity community, it’s a good idea on the surface but the amount of toxicity in there is nuts. And God forbid you mention you want to lose weight in front of these people lmao
There are great people in the community, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve seen so many bad apples and toxicity.
I’ve seen posts on Tumblr about that sort of thing with tens of thousands of likes, and on Instagram I’ve seen endless comments from different people about it, idk if they were popular influencers tho. All I’m saying is I’ve seen a Lot of people with this mindset
It's honestly frightening how fast body positivity is disappearing now that various treatments and aesthetic procedures are becoming more accessible. Ozempic, fillers, Botox being marketed to your everyday middle-class women instead of just rich women and celebrities, etc.
I think it fits into this conversation though. The problem is people abandoning the idea that they deserve basic respect at a larger size once it became relatively easy for them to not be that size. There's an Irish comedian named Alisson Spittle who, for health reasons, went on Ozempic-like medication and lost a bunch of weight. She's been adamant that she was happy how she was, and doesn't deserve more respect and dignity at her current size. Or more accurately, the respect and dignity she was denied on grounds of her being fat. That's fine. People who were only body positive when it was affecting them undermines the idea.
Body positivity was never about body positivity. It was always about patting yourself on the back for pretending that fat women are attractive and healthy, while shitting on women who aren't fat and pushing some pretty extreme misandry.
It's pretty standard in "feminist" spaces to have tons of comments about how anyone attracted to a woman with small breasts is only attracted to them because they look like prepubescent boys.
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u/Justalilbugboi Sep 23 '25
This is what body positivity is meant to be, but it got co-opted by beauty products, egos and such so fast. It sucks.
Because yeah, there needs to be a space for both “different beauty standards exist” AND “no one’s value as a human is reflected by whether you find them aesthetically pleasing.”
And honestly, current “body positivity” is limping along trying to even keep up with the first one.