Body positivity, which started as a movementdesigned to encourage people to take joy in theircurrent body, has come to mean forcing orfaking positivity in spite of your true feelings.Try as we may, that’s not always possible— or healthy.
Where body positivity fails,body neutrality comes into play.Body neutrality promotes the radical notionthat your body is worthy of acceptance as it is.The movement urges people to stop thinkingof the body as an object by challenging the ideathat the way you look has anything to do withyour inherent worth.As Jay Polish described for Bustle in June,“mainstream body positivity has a kind of ‘I amunconditionally thrilled with my body at alltimes’ vibe, body neutrality is more ‘I have abody, and so does everyone else’”.TikTok user Maddy told In The Know thatbody positivity is “great for a lot of people,”but it can lead to “obsessing with the superficialunder a veil of empowerment”.“Everything changed for me when I stoppedtrying to force ‘I love my body’ and started affirming‘my body is the least interesting thing about me’”.Taylor Chilton, a TikTok user who has educatedthousands of young people about body neutrality,said “Fat isn’t bad … And your weight has nothingto do with your worthiness as a person”