The commercialisation of body positivity
In the age of advertising, no one is free from the long arm of the corporate marketing budget. Attempts to package, sell and profit off our body image insidiously influence everything and everywhere—and one of the more prevalent right now is the focus on body positivity.
We all need some body positivity; we all struggle with it. Having a healthy and positive view of your body is something that hardly comes naturally given the social pressure and advertising vitriol we’ve been fed all our lives. And when that beauty standard changes as often as it does, it’s impossible to keep up, let alone stay positive. For people of colour, disabled people and trans people, it’s even more difficult given how little positive representation they receive—and the ingrained societal notion that the epitome of beauty is the thin, blonde, white woman.
Even if you are a thin, blonde, white woman, and pleased about it, you’re not immune to a bad day, or a life-long habit of nit-picking your appearance. We’re never happy because we’re told we’re never enough.
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Body positivity, then, is the valiant effort to reject this rigid view of beauty. Industries have made billions feeding off our insecurities—you’re not pretty enough, buy this mascara; you’re not thin enough, drink these detox teas; you’re not young enough, slather your face with this elixir; you’re not elegant enough, suffocate yourself with this perfume.
Women got fed up. Men got fed up. We all got fed up and body positivity was born.
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Body positivity is the movement that says all bodies are good bodies; it neither encourages nor embraces obesity but says that as long as you’re healthy, you can be happy in the skin you’re in. It doesn’t demonise anyone who wants to lose weight; it simply wants you to feel good about yourself as you do so, and no matter which shape or size you are. Body positivity is appreciating your body for what it is and not basing your worth or value on your weight or clothing size.
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It’s complicated, and it means different things to different people—and most people will say they’re working on it all the time. It’s an arduous process to unlearn everything you’ve been taught to think about your body, to change perceived imperfections to simply aspects of your appearance.
As mass media continues to push an unrealistic image of the perfect body, rejecting the pressure to emulate is increasingly important. Even if you had the same time, money, personal trainer, personal chef, nutritionist, make-up artist, hair stylist, personal shopper, and beautician that Kim Kardashian has, you’d still never look like her. It’s crucial to recognise that you can never have the Kardashian body—leaving aside any surgical procedures she may have had or that you may undergo in pursuit—because your body is your own. It’s crucial to recognise that you are no less worthy than her because you don’t look like her and it’s crucial to understand that even she isn’t immune to chasing the ideal.
Even more importantly, understand that one woman’s beauty is not the absence of your own.
We’re bombarded by pressure to fit the mould—the number of plastic surgery procedures has risen 115 percent between 2000 and 2015, and Snapchat dysmorphia, where people ask for plastic surgery to look like filters on the app, is an actual thing.
We’ve become increasingly uncomfortable in our skin, but body positivity is here to help us feel better about ourselves.
As body positivity has gained traction, and the world has opened up to the idea of deviations from the beauty standard, corporations have jumped onboard. It’s fabulous to now see women of colour, plus-sized women and women older than 30 in advertising, on TV, and walking the runways in far greater numbers than ever before. The notion of beauty is on its way to being inclusive and expansive.
But, we’re still being told we’re not good enough—now, if you don’t love yourself, that’s your personal failing and you’ll need to buy into this marketing campaign to help you embrace your body.
Buying a product touted by a campaign telling you to feel beautiful also sells you the idea that if you’re using that product, you shouldn’t feel less than perfect. Suddenly, you’re not allowed to feel the way you do and now these negative feelings are even less acceptable to express. Despite all the positivity of body positivity, you can still feel less than, only now, you’re not allowed to feel bad about yourself.
As the media remains swamped by diet trends, fat-loss techniques, ways to hide ‘blemishes’ and ‘imperfections’, and continues to call aspects of the body or skin ‘imperfections’, we’re now learning that despite failing to meet the impossible standards we’ve been fed for so long, we’re supposed to simply brush off our feelings of unworthiness and ‘embrace our flaws’. Where’s the messaging that these things aren’t ‘flaws’ to begin with?
Telling women to love themselves even when they don’t doesn’t change anything. Commercialised body positivity does nothing to clean up the mess and toxicity a standard of beauty has left on self-esteem—rather, we need a concerted change in societal opinion and to abolish the notion that beauty (in any shape or form) is the sole determiner of a person’s worth.
Body image and self-esteem need a serious overhaul.
Body positivity on a personal scale is a great first step—in a world where 60 percent of adults admitted to feeling ‘ashamed’ of the way they look, learning to accept and appreciate your body is vital. Body-shaming of all types has been shown to yield detrimental long-term effects ranging from depression to anorexia—at least 1.1 million people in the UK alone are affected by eating disorders.
But, any negative thoughts you may have about your body aren’t suddenly going to dissipate upon reading some inspiration Instagram caption. As body positivity finds itself increasingly commercialized, people are swinging towards body neutrality.
Body neutrality is everything body positivity wanted to be. It’s accepting that you may experience negative feelings about yourself and accepting that you can’t always be positive. It’s recognizing that you won’t always love yourself all the time but that you can avoid self-hate while not simultaneously feeling pressured to love your body. The goal is to accept and respect your body the way it is.
The underlying message in body positivity now, especially on Instagram, is that for you to accept your body, you must post a photo of your ‘flaws’ and expect other people to like and thereby accept it. It’s still putting your self-worth in the hands of other people and leaving yourself to the mercy of their (societally-ingrained) opinions. Body neutrality rejects this.
It says no one else should have sway over how you see yourself. It says it’s your body and your body image and you’re the only one with control over how you see yourself. It understands that telling us to love our bodies is just inviting further scrutiny when what’s in your reflection has no bearing on your value to the world.
Practically, this is standing in front of the mirror to apply eyeliner because you like the way it looks. It’s dressing yourself the way you want to because you like the clothes, you like the fabric, you like the style. It’s catching a glimpse of yourself in a bathroom mirror and just recognizing yourself—oh hey, me.
Reject feeling less than. Just be. Body positivity has its place as does body negativity. The takeaway from all this: you owe nothing to society, least of all your self-esteem. ■
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With the myriad forms of information available to consumers nowadays, it can be difficult to parse through the noise and find ‘the truth in nutrition’. Snake-oil touts love this: It is easy to sell people what they want to hear.