The case for body neutrality

Body neutrality is the idea that we can accept our bodies as vessels that carry us through life, and not attach positive or negative feelings to our physicality. It’s about observing your body without judgement – a near-impossible ask sometimes. But here’s why it works for me.

The obvious cry of “But what about body positivity!?” echoes somewhere in the halls of the internet at this very moment. Someone will read this and think, well, if you’re going to all the trouble, you may as well just go ahead and love your body… Fair enough. But I’m not there yet. That’s where I want to be. I want to radiate confidence and believe I am the most beautiful being to ever have lived. In the meantime, though, this feels like a workable way to think about my body without spiralling into existential dread and another fad diet.

Simply put: I haven’t arrived at positivity yet. When I sit and think, really think, thoughts about my body are overwhelmingly negative. I have a bristly mole on the top of my head that seems to be scientifically immune to any attempts at extraction. There are stretch marks that show I have grown too fast for the very organ that houses me. My cumbersome, lop-sided breasts have been a source of endless shame to no one but myself. And then the hair… The fucking hair. Painful ingrown pubes, a peach fuzz moustache, and a stubborn unibrow-that-could. I could go on for days and it’s easy to linger.

But onwards we must move…

Ordering A Disorder

I’ve never, not once, since the age of 10 felt comfortable in a swimming costume. I’m far from alone in that, which is equal parts reassuring and heart-breaking. A couple of years back, research by Planet Fitness showed that 46% of respondents would rather speak in public than wear their swimming cozzie. This self-consciousness, paired with the aggressiveness of social media, leads us to believe that our bodies are the real problem.

“I’d be so much happier if I could fit into the clothing I wore in high school. If only I could just lose 5kg – I’d even settle for 3, if pressed.” So, we stop eating, we start exercising, we overeat, we rinse, we repeat.

Years on, I am still making order of the eating disorder I had (have?). In my second year of studying I figured out that if I just go ahead and stop eating, I can try to erase the years of neuroses associated with being a fat kid. I lost weight and gained attention. I was praised for my dedication, my restraint, my tiny little wrists, and my flat little belly.

When I inevitably gained the weight back (and then some), the social media cheerleaders and cat-callers shrunk back into the dark corners from whence they came. I was back to being funny and smart, but not especially pretty. Pretty if I just lost some weight. What’s transpired is rebellion in the form of rabid binge eating. I now eat too much, too fast, too regularly.

It’s tough to admit this kind of thing. Over the past 10 years, my weight has fluctuated by about 25kg – that’s equivalent to the weight of a gazelle or three very large watermelons. There’s a lot of context around each kg and a lot of space for shame to metastasise. However, body neutrality tells me that that’s just a fact. It’s a number; a measurement. All things being even: I have gained that weight since starving myself at 20.

Since 20, I’ve also obtained three degrees, met the love of my life and gotten married, lost my grandmother and a close friend, gotten two dogs, travelled to three countries, worked six jobs, and made a few glorious mistakes. Life goes on.

The Beauty Myth

I first heard about Naomi Wolf’s seminal (feminal?) publication, “The Beauty Myth” (1991), in an anthropology lecture. The book describes a set of punishing cultural practices that, she explains, had been designed to oppress women newly liberated by second-wave feminism. The prescribed coursework marked my first experience reading something that linked my secret shames and anxieties to a larger cultural problem. It was hugely validating.

The shortest of short summaries is that Wolf argues that beauty is the “last, best belief system that keeps male dominance intact”. We’ve been conditioned to believe that beautiful women should look a certain way: youthful with a thin body and thick hair, and so on. This means that the average woman winds up never being enough – not tall enough or tanned enough or sexy enough or chaste enough. In this way, women are kept subordinate, punishing themselves by chasing the unattainable.

This theory underpins the booming diet, fashion, and beauty industries. We spend money to look a certain way, and when enough of us do, the expectation shifts. From Twiggy in the 1960s to the Kardashians in the 2010s – as soon as enough women conform, the culture must evolve in order to keep us chasing, spending, starving, and unhappy with the way we look. After all, who will keep these industries alive if we all embraced the radical belief that we’re actually just fine the way we are?

I shared a copy of this book with my best friend years ago and it’s now become a kind of shorthand between us. We sit and watch shitty reality shows and mutter “The Beauty Myth” every time a woman is given flack for not conforming to the beauty standards upheld by others in the group. Once it’s part of your vocabulary, the beauty myth becomes near-impossible to disregard.

To quote Wolf:

“When you see the way a woman's curves swell at the hips and again at the thighs, you could claim that that is an abnormal deformity. Or you could tell the truth: 75% of women are shaped like that, and soft, rounded hips and thighs and bellies were perceived as desirable and sensual without question until women got the vote.”

The F Word

My new favourite word is ‘fat’ (followed very closely by ‘fuck’, as those close to me will know). I use it all the time in reference to myself. Fat is a feeling, a fact, a way of life. When asked how I’m doing, I’ll most often reply that I’m fat and happy, thanks. Without fail, I am corrected: don’t say that! You’re not fat!

To me, fat is not an ugly word. I’ve had to reclaim it; to get ahead of it and embrace it. In my mind, there’s nothing wrong with being fat. There are far worse things a person can be, for example: hungry, tired, embarrassed, self-conscious. Objectively, I have fat on my body and I have a fat body. Big fucking deal.

Knowing that literally everyone is on their own journey healing their body and their relationship with food, I would never call anyone else fat. But fat fits me. It’s how a 5-year-old kid would describe me with absolutely zero malice. Just like, without pretence, a child would describe someone as hairy, big, lumpy, short, round, skinny. These are all just adjectives that, at their core, are pretty neutral. It’s society that’s decided what it’s okay to be and what’s not. It’s the beauty myth at work, maliciously encoding loaded meaning into our language.

Not okay with ‘fat’? Here are some other pretty cool F words you can describe yourself with instead: funny, flirtatious, focused, free-thinking, friendly, flamboyant, forgiving, fair, faithful, fun, fierce, forward, fulfilled, feminist.

Final Thoughts

As I am growing (fatter, but also older), I am increasingly happy to settle on neither hating nor adoring my body. Our bodies are our vessels – they exist solely to house our brains. They allow us to think, touch, taste, laugh, rest, sweat, travel, learn, read, love. We’re more than our bodies, so, to me, it’s fine if my body is just as it is, moles and all.

I should be in love with my body. I should sweet-talk it and buy it kitsch gifts and make sacrifices for it and pretend I like Pulp Fiction for it.

But it’s not love yet; I’ve only just started courting it.