Well, the title of the article as you may have read, alludes towards talking about the thin line that exists between body positivity that has been ill represented by the fat acceptance movement, promoting an unhealthy lifestyle and mindset.
The very essence of the body positivity movement as stated by its seed promoter Deb Burgard, in the late 90s was to support and help HIV positive patients accept their bodies, to feel whole and complete.
In recent years, this movement has been very inclusive of various body dysmorphic disorders by imparting acceptance – accepting a burnt face or a bald head, amputated limbs, loving ones’ birth and stretch marks, embracing how tall or short one is, adjusting into a new body after reassignment surgery, accepting and working towards one’s mental disorder,so on and so forth.Some leading advocates of the body positivity movement who abide by this definition and cause are: Harmann Kaur; the girl with a beard, Mama Cax; the one who lost her leg to cancer, Winney Harlow; aims to normalise the condition of Vitiligo, Chris Moiser; a proud transgender athelete who talks about his transition on social media ;thier raison-de-etre being to break out from the ideal beauty standards constrained by society by simply accepting the so-called “flaws”.
Winney Harlow Mama Cax Harmann Kaur
Now this one little clause “accepting the flaws”, ideally means to vehemently flout the beauty standards that are set by models on the covers of the Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Playboy or the runways of Victoria’s Secret. Conventionally, an ideal body for a woman has always been portrayed to have an extremely thin figurette, resulting in a slender physique, with a tiny waist, large hips and busts and a pair of long legs, stimulating the ‘desirability’.
In order to debunk the above phenomena, women who have been conventionally termed ‘fat’, took to social media talking about the ill representation of ‘health’ and ‘beauty’; thus, the movement of “health at every size” and “fat acceptance”(which is a blanket term focussed on accepting obesity), unfortunately grew rampant.
I would like to mention that “fat” and “obesity” are two different things on the same spectrum. A higher body fat percentage leads to obesity and this has nothing to do with the way one looks. For example: even though a person who appears to be slender or lean has an excess amount of body fat in the body, they are categorised under “obese”(which the world seems to be ignorant about). Whereas, if a heftier looking person has an optimum amount of muscle mass in the body, they can be considered to be healthy.
The fat acceptance influencers (mostly morbidly obese individuals) such as Tess Holliday, Ashley Graham, Vergie Tovar and the like, claim to be teaching to love our bodies by accepting being fat (non inclusive of those slender bodies with a higher body fat percentage) and infact claiming that obesity is “healthy”, and go an extra mile shaming anybody who isn’t of their body type. The hypocrisy!
The body positive movement which was started off with such a noble cause thus, unfortunately succumbed to radical promotion of obesity; a DISORDER, just like anorexia (starving oneself) or bulimia (binging and later purging oneself) is.
Fronted by plus-sized models and social media influencers, the fat acceptance movement aims to normalise obesity. With terms such as “straight size” and “fat pride” proliferating,some influential figures are now even terming the valid concerns of health officials as ‘hate crimes’. It's time, we hit a balance by drifting away from the skinny goals but also take a step back from normalising morbid obesity.
So, how do we do it – The BODY MASS INDEX (BMI) seems to be a good start. The BMI is a value derived from the mass (weight) and height of a person. It provides a simple numeric measure of where one stands with thier wieghts, by categorizing the results into ‘underweight’, ‘normal’, ‘overweight’ and ‘obese’, allowing health professionals to discuss weight problems more objectively with their patients.
The second most plausible option is to measure your body fat percentage, indicating how healthy or unhealthy, one is, as suggested by the renowned dietician, Rujuta Diwekar. The ideal body fat percentage for women as formulated by WHO is as follows:
Category Percentage
Essential fats 10-13%
Athletes 14-20%
Fitness 21-24
Acceptable 25-31%
Obesity >32%
And for men,
Category Percentage
Essential fats 2-5%
Athletes 6-13%
Fitness 14-17%
Acceptable 18-24%
Obesity >25%
This is just what one might call a “goal” to reach. The question is how do we do so?
Many famous and respected dieticians and doctors have given us a few guidelines to achieve the above mentioned numericals. The most sought after and result oriented approach is the “lifestyle change” approach which includes, as they would like to call it, the P5 or five pillars.
Primarily, the five pillars talk about:
availing good nutrition by investing in a balanced diet (the one that we’ve been studying about ever since general science was called EVS!)
exercising everyday
drinking enough water
sleeping well
and last but not the least: being positive and calm by being connected to your senses and the surrounding around you.
But we mustn’t forget that reaching the right body fat percentage and BMI range is a journey by itself; one may face a lot of challenges such as hormonal imbalances or other prevailing health conditions but it is important to not give up.
And once you get there, and if you unfortunately still receive those hate speeches for the way you look or if irrational thoughts cross your mind, that is when body positivity and its principles come in handy - to fight those insensitive people and your own downbeat mindset.
The bottom line is loud and clear - You are undoubtedly beautiful just the way you are, but you have got to necessarily be healthy – physically, mentally and socially.
Good luck in this journey and cheers!
Author: Keerti Koushik
Editor : Shanaya Patil
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