Body Image and acceptance is a continuum; if you do not love your body, there is space to feel neutral, or accept it, while you move toward love.
In my experience, it appears as though many more people are familiar with the concept of Body Positivity than with Body Neutrality. In theory, I love the idea of the BoPo movement. Founded on the idea that (as we know) bodies come in different shapes and sizes, and one beauty ideal is limiting and quite dangerous, the movement strives to be inclusive of size, shape, ethnicity, ability, age and more. What a beautiful concept! And who among us does not want to feel self-love?
Here’s where things get tricky.
I have reflected on this a lot, thought back to my own experience in recovery with body image challenges. While the concept of body positivity is wonderful, it can feel like a distant, unattainable goal when you are stuck in a cycle of self-hatred. I can remember being so acutely aware of my physical self; actually able to feel the parts of my body I was at war with, and wanting to do anything to escape the feeling. The idea that I could ever love the skin I was in was unreachable, and frankly, felt a bit cheesy and insulting. My mindset was so far away from even believing that this was a realistic possibility for me, I felt like a failure before I even tried to internalize the message. I felt defeated before I even started.
The challenge with body image improvement is that it takes a very long time. Despite doing all the “right” things in recovery, adjusting my behaviours, challenging my thoughts, practicing thought records and emotional regulation, my body image was terrible. On some days, it felt even worse in recovery! My body was changing through recovery, and if I didn’t love my old physical self, how could I love this new, strange being that I found myself in?I tried valiantly to challenge negative thoughts with new ones, focused on the idea that “my weight does not determine my worth”, or “we come in different sizes, no shape is better than another”, and so on, but experienced no relief.
In hindsight, this is why it was so difficult. Body positivity still focuses on the physical self. The silent messaging in the BoPo movement is that we must love our bodies, regardless of how they look. Body Neutrality strives to remove some of this pressure, and says it’s ok if I don’t love my body everyday, I can still respect the functions it performs. The concept behind the practice is actually about removing any feelings associated with the physical self, and move toward feeling neutral about the physical self. Body neutrality is learning to accept and respect the function of the machine, rather than the appearance of the machine.
For example:
Think of a brand new, shiny Ferrari. Oh, it is pretty. It is shiny, and sleek, and sexy, and everyone wants to drive it. For some, we might stay up late, work extra, take on extra jobs, miss out on social activities, all in an effort to save enough to buy this car.
Now imagine you are stranded on the side of the highway. It’s dark, you have no cell phone reception, and you are alone. You have been waiting for hours for help to show up, and when they do, it is a rust bucket, held together with duct tape. Despite the appearance of the jalopy, you manage to travel safely to your destination, and arrive in one piece.
When you were stranded, having not seen another driver for hours, would you refuse the ride because the jalopy looked different from the Ferrari? Chances are that you wouldn’t, because the FUNCTION of the machine outweighed the non-essential aesthetic desire.
This is the what the mental shift from body positivity, or body acceptance, into one of body neutrality looks like. It focuses on “what is”, rather than “what isn’t”. Body Neutrality decreases the pressure of needing to love your body, to focusing on what it does for you. Over time, this may transform into body acceptance and love, but along the way, it does help to relieve some pressure around body image thoughts.
Part Two will discuss how to put this paradigm shift into play.