Is Body Neutrality the New Body Positivity?

How many times have you been told to ‘love’ your body for what it is? But, a new movement says we should just ‘accept’ it, with all its flaws, without adoring or loathing it. Cosmo guest columnist Priya-Alika Elias makes a strong case for why it may be time to alter the discourse and the perception.

14 December, 2020
Is Body Neutrality the New Body Positivity?

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“I can’t remember loving my body. I don’t think I ever have. I have spent a lifetime at war with my body. I have been hammering away at it since I was a teenager, trying to beat it into a more pleasing shape. I wanted sinewy arms, more boyish hips, a flatter belly... I wanted my body to submit to my will. And when it didn’t, I hated it with enough passion to kick-start an engine.
When I discovered the body positivity movement, I should have been exhilarated. Here, finally, was an alternative. I was being given the permission to reject the steady stream of messages that I had received all this while...messages to be thin. We were told to love our ‘problem areas’, to embrace our cellulite, to cherish our spots, saggy skin, and stretch marks as one might a beloved friend.
But it didn’t work for me. No matter how many articles I read or how many celebrities exhorted me to, I simply couldn’t love my body. I couldn’t wake up in the morning and compliment my reflection. I couldn’t suction away the years of hate and replace them with boundless enthusiasm for my physical form. It felt like a failure. It felt like lying to myself.
Worst of all, reading glowing captions about how X, Y, and Z had ‘learned to love their flaws’ only reminded me of the flaws I was trying so desperately to forget in the first place.
What did work for me, though, was exercise. I would never have thought it possible since I was painfully uncoordinated as a child. I was always the last to get picked for teams; I dreaded sporty people and their mania for ‘going on hikes’.
But the thing about exercise is this: it re-engineers your relationship with your body. When you’re busy trying to perfect your downward dog yoga pose, you don’t think about how fat your thighs look from behind. Or, when you attempt to hold a plank for just five seconds longer than the last time, you don’t worry about the extra inch that swells out over your leggings. In those precious moments, your body is just a tool, and a hard-working one at that.
I’m not entirely negating the body positivity movement. I’m glad it exists, and I’m happy for the people it has helped. But as we move into the future, the most radical movement I can imagine is one of body neutrality. We don’t have to expect women to ‘love’ their bodies—what is that but one more unrealistic standard? We only have to ask women to come to terms with their bodies, to view them neutrally. As things that carry us through the world day after day, hour after hour. And things don’t have to be beautiful to serve us. We don’t have to feel great about our bodies all the time; we only have to stop fighting them.”

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Priya-Alika Elias
(Lawyer, and Author, Besharam: Of Love And Other Bad Behaviours)

I’ve spent a lifetime at war with my body.

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