Body Complacency- We’ve lost the damn plot…

Self care, toxic positivity, excuses, excuses, excuses

I’ve never been a skinny girl.

Building muscle has always come easily to me, and losing fat has always been really hard. I have my dad’s metabolism. My dad is extremely self-disciplined. He told me growing up that he used to be really chubby as a kid, but ever since I’ve known him, he’s always been very fit. My dad spends hours every day in the gym, even when we go on vacation, and then walks 20,000 steps a day, every day. He’s in his 60s and it’s really hard to slow him down. But he works for it.

I used to be resentful of the girls my age who didn’t have my problem of gaining weight (fat and muscle). They could eat whatever and however much they wanted. They had something come naturally that I spent so much time and energy thinking about. I spent my time learning how different foods affected your body, understanding muscle groups and trying my best to improve my body, and then being annoyed because for me results seemed to take 4 times as long.

Naturally, I found an affinity with the body positivity movement. I knew that taking care of yourself can result in many different forms; health didn’t fit into a one size fits all (ie a size 0, limited fat, lightly toned muscle). The more I looked into the body positivity movement, it actually inspired me to learn more about historical beauty trends. For my freshman year social issues project, I chose to study how beauty standards, specifically when it comes to body shape, have changed. I learned that the body standard would change with factors like the socio-economic status of the country or disease.

It’s no question that beauty standards¹ are a reflection and a longing to look a part of the highest socio-economic class. In the past, when we talk about the beauty standard being larger women and having more fat, it was because eating food and not needing to move at all to work was a symbol of luxury. It was not a symbol of health, it was a symbol of wealth. This is still the case in some countries in modern times; the larger the women get, the more they are valued, and the more your value increases if they are your partner. It shows that their partner can provide, that they have no worries and no need to move because everything can be done for them.

I also learned that when times were tough, economically, skinny was glorified. However, skinny the way we know skinny didn’t really begin to be glorified until Tuberculosis (TB) in the 18th-19th centuries. When TB spread across the Western world, but specifically in America, all of a sudden it didn’t matter how much you ate or how complacent you were, you couldn’t gain weight. In addition, TB affected higher classes disproportionately because of the rate of inbreeding among the influential, so all of a sudden, the beauty standard flipped on its head. It became “hot and trendy” to be deathly skinny, have a hollow face, red cheeks, and prominent veins. Often women would use makeup to redden their cheeks and paint veins on, as well as other makeup practices to stimulate the symptoms of this disease. In the same way that fatness was celebrated when gout was rampant, thinness was celebrated with the rise of TB.

There are so many examples of this - beauty standards not reflecting health.(heroin chic… the list goes on. ) They reflect people’s aspirations in relation to class, and for a really long time (arguably still now, but less extreme), it was extremely objectifying of women. For a really long time, a woman’s body was just an extension of a man’s status.

The body positivity movement seemed like an appropriate answer to this. It said, “Beauty standards can be dangerous and harmful; instead, focus on health rather than chasing skinny.” - No brainer; of course, you should focus on health.

So what’s health?

Health is a state of physical, mental, and social well-being, not just the absence of disease or infirmity. (WHO)

I liked where this was going. Instead of focusing on why I was larger than a size 8, I could focus on getting stronger, eating well, and fueling my body to do great things. And for the first time, it felt like what mattered wasn’t the way the result looked, but the result as a whole. For me, the goal was to be strong, self-sufficient, and focusing on longevity. I started taking the gym seriously.

Fast forward, freshman year of college. And I start losing steam. I don’t think I was at my peak end of senior year, but whatever I had, I began to lose slowly, partially in having access to eat shitty food at 2 a.m. when I wanted, and loosening the reins on the gym. And then COVID hit. I kept feeling like shit, so I would loosen the reins which would in turn make me feel like shit. It’s known that eating well and physically moving affect your mood in a positive way, so I was stuck in this vicious cycle. But I was also perpetuating it, I didn’t want to “push” myself, I was already having a bad day and “I deserved to rest.” It was self-harm in the form of self-care. Body positivity acceptance very easily became complacency.

I want to be clear - resting is important, it’s essential. But so is discipline. You need both, you can’t just do one or the other, it doesn’t work, and in my case it was all rest and no play.

1. If you want to stay the same, work the same amount as you rest.

2. If you want to improve, work more than you rest²

3. If you want to get worse rest more than you work.

   “The punishment has to fit the crime”

   The consequence has to fit the action.

Health, to me, is about moderating yourself. Unfortunately, I think that the modern definition of moderation has been bastardized. Moderation - in terms of health - does not mean a little bit of everything whenever you want; it means knowing yourself and your own cues and making rational choices based on irrational and implicit urges. What do I mean by this? - I would argue that you can’t moderately take opiates recreationally;you can’t cut yourself in moderation. These are extreme examples, but it makes my point - Harmful things in moderation are still harmful. Unhealthy things in moderation are still unhealthy. Doing an unhealthy thing in moderation doesn’t make the unhealthy thing healthy; it doesn’t make you healthy. Fast food every now and then isn’t healthy - if you are going to eat fast food, it’s only healthy to eat it every now and then. It’s the nuance that’s important.

Health is a spectrum, and it’s complicated, and there are so many aspects to it. Maybe you had an absolutely exhausting day, and if you have to eat one more crappy meal prep, it’s going to cause you to lose it. Then don’t eat the meal prep - but don’t fall off completely and eat crap just because things are hard. Or do. Whatever. Just don’t label it as health. Mental health is, of course, equally and intertwined with physical health, but there are other alternatives to falling off.

The other side exists to this as well. Orthorexia and obsessive needs to constantly be in control of your health (to an extreme) is equally bad. It’s also an eating disorder, a mental illness. So is Binge Eating Disorder. And they both have the same side effects (actually BEDs is worse as ortho can lead to anorexic And they both have the same side effects (actually BEDs can arguably be worse than orthorexia - ortho can lead to anorexic tendencies which can lead to death, but BED itself can lead to death). I don’t understand why it seems to be that the only EDs that “society” is hyper-vigilant about are orthorexia and anorexia (and bulimia). They all ruin your ability to understand your body, they literally all kill and the most common one is BED. We’re entering a phase of society where self-moderation is considered an anorexic behavior (which in itself is, I feel, very discrediting to people who legitimately struggle with anorexia) when it is actually the actual solution to the most common eating disorder in America.

Eating disorders are commonly considered not eating enough, but eating too much is just as bad.

I believe the issue I aim to address is that any behavior that demonstrates self-control is unfairly criticized as orthorexia, while actual unhealthy behaviors are not demonized in the name of body positivity, which I argue is not true body positivity. Instead, it’s the opposite.

As I’ve said, body positivity is about focusing on your health, not chasing a fad. People say that being healthy is easy - and that’s not true, it’s simple but not easy. In today’s world, where convenience and comfort are highly valued, maintaining discipline has become increasingly challenging. Complacency becomes rewarded, “real bodies” celebrated, and we as a society are veering away from health, actual health, not the everything in moderation health. There’s nothing to strive for anymore, and it’s dangerous. Body positivity has turned into body compliance.

Body positivity should be and was originally about self-love. It involves loving yourself during transition periods, striving to be the best version of yourself, and recognizing that self-love doesn’t manifest the same way for everyone. I believe that most people don’t love themselves as much as they should. They preach self-love but then engage in self-destructive behaviors.

We’ve lost the damn plot.

I believe in loving yourself through transition, but I do believe that life is a constant transition. A goal that has everyone constantly striving to be better, consistently. No one is perfect the way they are because no one is perfect. So work to get as close as possible. If you don’t want to, you are free to do so, but don’t shift the narrative, don’t claim to be something you’re not.

Self-care has turned into sloth, an excuse to max out your credit card and eat horrible (delicious) foods. And then we are told that “You deserve it.” No! I’m sorry, you don’t deserve to treat yourself that way.

That’s not self-care, and you deserve better. You especially deserve better from yourself.

1. Specifically for women

2. This is within reason - and that’s important. Push yourself but dont strain. Straining is also unhealthy.