Wow, this part from the article you shared @LadyDuck
Summary
it was so nice to see someone mention the “material impacts”, that’s such a good way of putting it. Disability is often framed as a cultural issue alone, like a problem of perception (which is true), but it’s also an active daily problem you have to puzzle through constantly (with varying levels of success depending on class, race, location, and random luck).
“If body positivity is meant to radically reconfigure how we view all bodies – and not just fat, white ones with curves in all the right places – there must be a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which “positivity” as a framework simply cannot succeed on its own. What does it mean, for instance, to tell a trans person they must love their body as it is? Or a disabled person they must love their body? What does it mean to tell people who have very little control over the decisions made in regards to their own bodies that all they have to do is “love their body” and everything will somehow magically work out?We know that it just isn’t that simple. There are so many ways in which the bodies of the oppressed are controlled and subjugated by systems of power that have real, material impacts on their lives and in their own abilities to make autonomous decisions for themselves.”
I thought about this a lot on my evening walk. Growing up I knew I wasn’t conventionally pretty, and honestly it was super tragic at first for me as a 12-13 year old that didn’t look like all the other girls. It seemed like the most important thing was to be like this adorable petite MK + Ashley looking type of pretty, which could not have been further from what I looked like. Later on as I got older I figured out if I could just be athletic enough it wouldn’t matter how pretty I was, because at least I could win at sports. If my identity could be wrapped up in what my body could accomplish as an athlete, it didn’t matter what size it was, or how pretty it was. I thought that was body liberation. And it really felt like it…for a long time. I thought I had cracked the code to my physical insecurities, both of my looks and my size. And then being an athlete was taken away from me and I thought…what purpose does my body have now? Even worse, I thought…what purpose does my life have now. If I can’t have a body that is pretty, or athletic, or strong, or or or…all these things that rely basically on luck of the draw, then what do I have? I don’t know that I had ever thought about what I had to offer…or what the point of life was outside of my physical body before I was forced to.
It’s been a few years now since I was forced to “sit in the suck” as I call it and think about who I was going to be and what I was going to do that had nothing to do with being an athlete. What I had to offer, who I could be and what I could do, like I really thought I had nothing. I went through a phase of trying really hard to practice body positivity, even though it felt a lot more like toxic positivity to me, since I was basically lying when I stared in the mirror and said “I love my body” haha. It’s took a lot of time, but I’ve realized that at least for me, loving my body has absolutely nothing to do with loving myself, or who I am and who I will be. The days I feel good, like I love who I am and my life, I nothing my body. I have no feelings, emotions or thoughts toward it. I don’t think about it… I have so little control over what my body feels like or can do on any given day that I just try not to let myself think thoughts about it, positive or negative. On my best days, if I’m really lucky, my body is just there, moving me through my day, but not taking away from my experience of life. Of course that isn’t every day, or even most days, but I relish those days and soak up every minute I get to experience it.
I also think having these experiences of feeling “nothing” towards my body has helped me with my perception of my physical appearance. I don’t really look in the mirror anymore and say “wow I look really pretty today” or “wow I look rough today”…when I look in the mirror it’s like…“I am who I am” like it doesn’t even cross my mind to think about what I look like in a positive/negative way because it’s this physical representation of me that I have very little control over outside of showering and washing my hair once in a while haha.
Obviously a lot of that is just my own personal, anecdotal thoughts… I love this message that beautiful just isn’t that important. I’d take it even further and add that your ability to do XXX things with your body, or be strong or athletic, or any number of things that have to do with your body, aren’t important, or aren’t your only worth as a person. I wish that message had been shared with me growing up, because I really did think my entire worth was in what my body was capable of, or looked like. I was surrounded by people who felt the same way, and sadly a lot who still do and who think my life is completely tragic because I can’t ride bikes anymore or lift heavy things.
Yeah, I agree. I was wary of the body positivity movement from jump in part because ability level is used as a shield for fatphobia a lot among fat activists, even as they continually appropriate terms like “accessibility” and “ableism”. The rallying cry seems to be, “but I’m HEALTHY, I have perfect bloodwork and no limitations! I ran a marathon and dance and I have a successful job! I do not have health problems, how dare you suggest that I do.”
And I understand why fat activists would go that route after years of people assuming they are less than able and have health problems, when neither is true. When people think you have health problems they treat you poorly, and years of getting unsolicited advice is terrible, but like, all that also happens to the people this group is so offended to be mistaken for. No one wants to be mis-perceived. But the way they protest against having a disability or health problem happens is like…got it. Message received on what you think about those people, lol.
The beauty thing is a whole other can of worms because I’m slim and conventionally attractive now but I also lived part of my life visibly very different from most human beings and…yeah. That experience convinced me of exactly one thing: almost everything about the way you are treated in the world is appearance based. I didn’t become a better person overnight, I just had lots of fucking surgeries and started to look more normal, and then went through puberty. And boom! All the sudden no one threw rocks at me from cars or told me to kill myself or spoke loudly to me like I was very dim or asked if I had cancer and was dying, instead they held open doors and told me things were “on the house” and basically kissed my ass. It was absolutely one of the most bizarre experiences of my life going from one to the other. It happened over a span of about 2 years. It was like the world completely changed.
So then I feel like, body positivity is a necessary step because I mean, you have to start somewhere, and people who totally hate themselves aren’t usually effective at creating change. I think it’s a net good overall even if it’s only applicable to a certain niche. I do wish they’d stop using words like deformed and disfigured though, even Aubrey Gordon still does that a lot and it’s like girl come on…lol.
LOL so true. I think that’s why I’m interested in this newer frame of thinking (like in the articles shared here) that maybe the next step is to talk about why appearance plays such a huge role in everything to begin with, since that seems like the common issue between so many groups and across so many issues outside of body politics. I feel like this wave of body politics stuff is kind of like early white American feminism in that it’s accomplishing something by making this a conversation more people are having, and getting headlines, but it’s also kind of missing reality for lots of people since it’s still speaking to a relatively rarified situation.
Yes! It definitely feels that way. It used the method of putting down/ steamrolling other experiences to just get traction in mainstream but it has soooo much further to go and include and become aware of and change
I think I disagree with this. Men certainly have a beauty standard base level that they have to meet before they are allowed to have other attributes.
For women, there is a piece that I’m not seeing here around performing beauty. A woman who is far away on the attractiveness spectrum can compensate by artificial performance, and that is generally sufficient unless they are actively competing on that attribute. Beauty is definitely not intrinsic. How hard you need to perform depends on what else is off from the current societal preferences (symmetry, weight, height, shape distribution, hair texture, skin tone, teeth, skin clarity).
Growing up I figured if I could just be smart enough, it wouldn’t matter how pretty I was. (as I have mentioned elsewhere, I am the largest and definitely the least attractive/photogenic of my siblings, which matters when your dad is a professional photographer).
I had an interesting discussion with my chiro the other day that falls into this discussion. I’m still not sure how I feel about it. On one hand I think he is right, but something still feels a little off about it to me. He has a 10 year old daughter and he said the first week of school she came home crying because she thinks she isn’t as pretty as the “popular” girls. She has been doing gymnastics and brazilian jiu jitsu since she was a toddler and she is very strong and a bit bulky/muscular already. He said he told her that she is never going to be beautiful for everyone. He said everyone has their own idea of what is beautiful and that what he finds beautiful will be different than what the next guy on the street finds beautiful or what the woman at the checkout counter finds beautiful. He said some people find dark hair beautiful and some people find blonde hair beautiful and some people think tall girls are beautiful and some think short girls are beautiful and it is impossible to be beautiful for everyone. He said he thinks she is beautiful and that there will be tons of other people throughout her life who think she is beautiful and she has to accept that she will only be beautiful for those people and there will also be tons of people who don’t think she is beautiful.
This can obviously be difficult if you are constantly bombarded with ads and messaging that says “XYZ is the only way to be beautiful” but I thought he framed it in a way to help fight against that type of messaging.
That is something I’ve definitely come across before, and it feels off to me. I think my discomfort comes down to a) it’s still emphasising that having some people find you beautiful is important, and equates “finds beautiful” with “values”, and b) feels dishonest about the fact that there are some people who almost everyone finds beautiful, and some who almost does not, and that does have impact on the sort of problems that are likely to come up in people’s lives.
Being seen to perform beauty (where I’m asusming we’re talking about things like wearing makeup, spending lots of time/ money on clothes) has it’s own stigma in some circles though? Which I find really interesting - I could read it as social stigma against distorting “real” signals, or as a sort of friction between what we think we’d like to value (i.e. aspects of a person that aren’t just appearance) and what we do value.
Performing beauty can be done in different ways depending on the space, yes. Some places would say I look much better with long hair. Others think that me with short hair is better for ‘xyz’ reason. There is a huge difference between ‘light makeup’, ‘no makeup’ and completely bare faced.
Performing beauty can just be the difference between ill fitting tshirt and wrong shoes vs. good shoes, tshirt with shoulder seams in the right spot and not slouching. It isn’t about money. (Money helps, but then we get more into discussions of class)
We value signals that people put in an effort (but not too much effort)
ETA: the ways we perform beauty are dependent on the group we are performing for. Failing to conform in some way is stigmatized. performing in a way that another group wants is stigmatized. Groups that don’t want makeup want hair to be a certain way frex. (and they probably still want femme moisturizing)
Yeah, I’ve seen that too. I don’t think I could have put into words what I thought about it, but I feel similarly to what you wrote. I totally understand why it’s being done and why people feel the need to almost “justify” their bodies by saying well I run marathons or ride 100 miles every weekend or here are my lab results and they are normal. Like, it sucks we live in a society that places so much emphasis on outward appearance that if you look any different from the norm, you have to go out of your way to make sure people know you are “healthy.” But I think the bigger issue is the fact that our bodies are a topic of discussion at all. Why are we still judging people externally based on factors that are almost entirely out of their control?
Yes, I agree…I think we have come really far with the “everyone is beautiful” type of messaging, like obviously that is an improvement and body acceptance is definitely in a different place than it was when I was a kid in the 90s and early 2000s. But why are we still talking about bodies? Why are we still valuing physical appearance over every other human attribute that people have to offer? I know that is just how things are but it really still boggles my mind.
ooh rubbing hands together i love this thoughtful discussion! i have a couple of thoughts to share!
one thing i love about aubrey gordon is how she flips from the perspective of body positivity or even body neutrality to body liberation. like i can love my own fat body all day long (and i do!) but it’s not necessarily gonna get me better treatment from doctors or a seat that doesn’t bruise me at a restaurant or on a plane. (though i do think that my self-loving perspective gets me marginally better treatment within a fatphobic culture and it’s also a much nicer way to live.)
anyway, i like how she switches the focus from loving our bodies to advocating for the most vulnerable bodies – very fat people, people with disabilities, etc.
i also think that there is a delicious internal feeling of beauty that definitely is related to others finding us beautiful but is not the same thing. i remember being in high school and my step sister telling me how pretty my face was and how i’d be so gorgeous if i just lost a few pounds and i became LIVID because motherfucker i been looking at my face for years and i was already gorgeous!!
for me this internal feeling comes from taking nice care of myself (amazing how much cuter i feel after breaking a sweat!) and having fun with my clothes and makeup and hair. i get a lot of pleasure from cultivating my own aesthetic and feeling cute.
the issue, to me, is when that pursuit of fun dopamine vibes pushes into chasing validation from others that i am beautiful / hot / desirable / whatever. of course the pursuit of that seems to show up in a lot of cultures to the point that it appears to be at least somewhat built in, but it’s an easy thing to take too far, and also very exploitable!
finally, i have definitely been one of those people who would tell people i was healthy / had good labs / whatever. i’ve since learned the harmfulness of that and have stopped but man, it is fucking ENRAGING to have people assume you are at death’s door just cause your body is bigger. (i know you all know this!) and the urge to correct people who are making incorrect assumptions is very strong. these days i have just learned how to do this without throwing other people living in marginalized bodies under the bus.
sonya renee taylor’s “the body is not an apology” has been so helpful to me to see more and more clearly how we place bodies in a hierarchy based on race, size, shape, ability, gender, etc etc, and to divest myself from that ladder as much as i can.
Wow, thanks @allhat and @LadyDuck - both such great articles and I have clicked links in both. I would say that this sums up a lot about body positivity
I often don’t follow body positivity stuff because I can’t deal with the algorithm showing me so much of the shit mixed in with the good.
I think a major piece in disconnecting from beauty is that beautiful people ARE more successful in the corporate field. Fuck, their spouses are more successful too. It is less useful to say being attractive doesn’t matter and more useful to discuss how to crack the attractiveness code to get what we want. I actually think that a lot of older (1800s-1960s) articles do a better job of explaining that than modern articles. The knowledge is also passed down in generations in minoritzed circles, including lgbtq.
I am not going to be a willowy, golden tanned, blonde girl - so how do I get as much of that status signal stuff as possible? My mum didn’t know how to teach me because her mum was a hot blonde. The betches advice to women in their twenties is that if you are skinny with straight hair, you pass as conventionally attractive. BUT, even if I was skinny, my figure doesn’t look skinny. Nope.
What does work? Groomed eyebrows, makeup OR perfect skin. Long glossy hair OR clearly defined well cut hair (‘a statement’). Clothes that fit your figure and the occasion - they need to be a bit better if you don’t fit the stereotype, A composed facial expression (a smile for the patriarchy is my weapon of choice, but if you don’t enjoy demure you can choose haughty, powerful, rbf etc. the important thing is for it to look natural while not being your natural face). Shoes that don’t look useful. This is gender neutral, and you can present in all kinds of ways as long as you fit the rules .
It looks like plain Jane posted while I slept on it.
But here is my more controversial piece - I think we can and should expand our idea of beauty so that more people can perform it and benefit. I don’t think that we can eliminate visual cues and bias.
*I don’t think it is healthy to put on this kind od identity all the time - just when it benefits us. I dress up to discuss chronic health issues with my doctor and go in pyjamas if i have a cold. I dress in a different way for work, and like a slob at home.
@beep_boop I think that knowing what to copy from a group is how you signal it - around dirty hippies (one of my love groups) the tight dresses, light makeup etc doesn’t “seem” natural. Flawless skin and eyeliner, a tentree short sweater dress, barefoot, long hair with product and I’m in. Leggings and a clingy slouchy top ? Pencil skirt and vintage tee. Or you can spend money on certain hair cuts, jeans are usually good but you need jeans that fit your body AND fit in. Not too new looking. Stuff from the import store. This is actually one of the hardest groups for bigger body types to dress to fit in
ETA @madgeylou you always say such insightful things about bodies
And, I use my body as a tool, but I am also attached to it’s benefits and faults. Spiritually maybe one day I overcome attachment from my feelings towards it
Yeah, I agree with this. I think humans being obsessed with appearance is a human issue, not a cultural one, or it wouldn’t happen literally everywhere throughout every era of history. The standards change but the existence of standards don’t. And I think women and men do it equally because it’s part of how our brains naturally sort things when we don’t have a lot of other information. I think that’s why someone who you thought was super hot at first can literally become ugly looking if you get to know them and they are terrible. But when you first met you had little to go on, but you did have voice, face, body, hair, scent, mannerism, etc. A real critique on beauty culture requires admitting its full extent and we don’t really want to think about that.
One area in which it has the biggest impact, IMO, is dating and coupling up. Education too, as assortative mating has increased a lot (i.e. the engineer used to marry his secretary, now the engineer marries another engineer). Education aside, if you are really attractive you have more choices, by a lot. But now it’s not enough to just be attractive if you want to jump classes. You need a certain pedigree too, in most cases. @Elle I have seen some interesting media related to this and clearly aimed at lower income people, and it reminds me more of 1960s and prior honesty about “look this is your strength and this is your weakness and here’s how to play it to get what you want.”
Another thing which I think has to be pulled into the conversation is cosmetic surgery, because it makes beauty even more of a class issue than it already was. The demographics on who gets cosmetic surgery nowadays is really interesting, because it is not just rich people. People go into debt for lips and butts and all the other things because the perceived power is so big. And just like with other trends there is an ebb and flow of “rich people do it it” and then “less rich people do it” and then “poorer people are doing it so it’s not desirable anymore.” There are so many people getting filler taken out now, because it’s become passe to have too much filler. It’s cheap looking, now, but it wasn’t considered so 5-10 years ago. People are changing their bodies along with fashion!
In so many rich areas girls get nose jobs for graduation, and I think that kind of thing will become more normal. It’s like we are all working towards having the same face and I find it totally fascinating.
In terms of my own body I honestly rarely ever think about my body except in terms of like, usability issues, workarounds, maintenance, pt, that kind of thing. Or writing here, haha.
Summary
One of the things I’ve found most informative about the body positive stuff I’ve read is how extensively so many people have thought about their bodies and other people’s bodies. I honestly just, don’t want to think about my body that much? It already takes so much energy, lol.
I was really happy to see this sentence in the article I posted earlier:
“I was middle class, my home situation was never precarious, and I was largely unchallenged in school — which is another way of saying that I had a lot of mental energy to dedicate to thinking about the ways I failed to fit in to the narrow understanding of what a teen girl should be and look and act like”
I definitely feel that disconnect due to having a different background, like I don’t relate to a lot of content about middle school/high school era things because I was dealing with really big stuff by that point. Wearing glasses and having hairy arms and big nose and a flat chest was like, whatever! Add it to the list!
I also struggle to connect when a lot of body activists talk about how you can’t tell a child something is wrong with their body, and how so many kids are told something is wrong with their body and how damaging that is. And it is damaging, I agree. But…what about kids who do have something wrong with them? We have to talk about them because they are actually the most damaged by this because…no one will counter it because it’s an absolute fact. And it makes me feel like the biggest obstacles that are faced in body positivity are those of perception.
I see that a lot with MP actually, like they give lip service to disabled people, kind of, but they’re pretty callous compared to when they talk about size issues. One interesting example was when Aubrey was talking about how people will sometimes tell her what she should be eating out at a restaurant, which I agree is horrifically rude and fatphobic and awful. She described it as “ghoulish” and “dehumanizing” and “humiliating” and it was a really serious and touching moment. In another episode she mentioned how people often tell disabled people to do weird things for their health, also unprompted (I think maybe the dr oz episode?) and said, “it’s just part of that funny way people are about disability!” and then they both made jokes about that (like hey can you walk yet?! haha did celery juice cure you or whatever?!) and laughed, lol.
The snake oil episode too, was absent a lot of disability history, and I see that a lot in their content. With diets they also often say, like in the paleo episode, “I mean there’s no reason to ever do this unless you are chronically ill or disabled or something” And it’s interesting because in my circle my disabled friends are definitely the ones trying new stuff, be it diets or cryotherapy or reiki or whatever. Like yeah, we are going to try all this “pseudoscience” and that hilarious I guess, but like, when actual science has run out of options for you, then you can critique me about it.
I think maybe the answer is to shout out disability activists instead, and like, invite them into the conversation and onto podcasts. Because as is it gives people the impression that they are standing up for disabled people, but they’re not, and that affects IRL treatment. I recently had a woman refer to me, to my face, as a “marginalized climber” at the climbing gym (this kind of thing is VERY new, never happened before in my life and now happens here and there) and I was like, “what?” and she was like, “well you’re in a marginalized body.” And I’m like, ughhh I hate this weird dehumanizing body talk! I am not in a body, my body is part of me, it is me, me and my body are the same. You know how I can prove it? If I kick you in the shins you don’t say, “ow, you kicked the body I’m in!” you say, “ow, you kicked ME.”
IDK, it’s interesting because I just hung out with my friend who is also a para climber and she was saying she has started getting comments that people think her amputated leg is “beautiful” and “brave” and she was like, “what is this millennial nonsense?” And I had to explain they were trying to be empowering and she was like, “who cares what it LOOKS like?” because obviously that’s like the least of her concerns at this point. And that’s why you need great friends, lol. Then we ate a bunch of italian ice and talked about taking a watercolor class on a boat.
ETA: And just to reiterate, I still like MP!!! I’m not trying to trash them at all. I think they’re hilarious and charming and I’ve learned a lot about the fat experience from them. I had a LOT to learn in that arena and it’s been very helpful. I just like to pick a bone here and there.
I think all of this was great points. Its not their area, goodness they laughed about the fluoride thing with Pete Evans and I was like “uuuuuum we missed some big nuance here dudes” but it was a tiny part and what they’re doing is overall so useful that right now I aint got energy for it.
But I bet we could email to recommend a disability discussion with an expert in that field, they’ve done it with others also I read those interactions on the podcast differently so I will pay more attention.
I mean it could also totally be that I was feeling sensitive when I happened to listen to those bits, haha. And I could be misremembering parts or not giving enough benefit of the doubt. I was really glad someone here posted more about the fluoride issue- because that was very enlightening! I wouldn’t have known about any of that otherwise. Somehow I didn’t know about fluoride in water? Like I feel like I never even heard debate around that? Either way they are super entertaining and I will def keep listening. I think they’re great and have all the best intentions.
also I read those interactions on the podcast differently so I will pay more attention.