Somewhere between hating your body, and loving it; between shaming, and embracing; between spending every waking hour devising ways to live healthy, and letting go completely, is what is called body neutrality.
In simple words, body neutrality is accepting your body, with its strengths and flaws, and understanding that your relationship with your body ebbs and flows, that there are days when you feel good about your physicality, and days when you don’t. And that everybody goes through this fluctuation. It is that zone when you are not driven by your body image, whether it is negative or positive.
When it started out, body positivity was a movement that we all needed. For far too long, we had been bombarded with unrealistic images of the ‘ideal’ body. It was pigeonholed, and did not leave any room for the diversity of forms, shapes, and skin colours that we have, all of which are normal, for lack of a better word. Of course, it took a psychological and emotional toll on many of us, who didn’t have, and could never have, this ‘ideal’ body. So began the body positive movement with the noble idea of embracing and loving one’s body with all its curves, cellulite, and other imperfections. But, there is a hidden dark side to this idealistic overdose of self-love. The journey from not liking your body, to loving it in all its glory is not possible for many of us to achieve.
According to The Dove Global Beauty And Confidence Report, based on a study conducted with a total of 10,500 women from 13 different countries, 85 percent women, and 79 percent girls say that they choose not to participate in social activities (including spending time with loved ones) when they don’t like how they look. Further, 7 out 10 girls who suffered from low body-esteem said that they don’t feel assertive or able to stick to a decision if they are not happy with how they look, and 9 out of 10 women said that they would take unhealthy measures like crash dieting if they thought they were overweight. In light of these statistics, one wonders how many people are actually benefiting from the body positivity movement.
The focus in the body positive movement is still on the shape and size of one’s body. When we focus on embracing our plus size body, we are still focused on its appearance. Body neutrality shifts that focus on the workings of the body. “It is fundamental that we value ourselves on our innate attributes, not our size or shape. The by-product of this is that we no longer seek to punish, restrict or accessibly move our bodies; rather we accept them as the functional nurturing things that they are. Body neutrality frees up more energy to concentrate on our aspirations, relationships, the things that fire up who we are and what we want to be,” says Christine Morgan, CEO of The Butterfly Foundation, an organisation based in Australia, that works for the treatment of body image and eating disorders.
It’s true, though. It does take a lot of work to love something you hated to begin with. Body neutrality offers that soft spot of acceptance, of being okay with the body you have, and frankly, that is enough.
