What happened to body positivity?

On the illogic of the current state of fat positivity/healthy at any size and gender ideology which states a child can be born in the wrong body

The seeds of the body positivity movement started in the 1960s. In 1969 a man named Bill Fabrey who was pissed off about the way the world treated his fat wife started the National Association to Aid Fat Americans. Today, it has become the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance.

Around the same time a group of women in California started the Fat Underground, furthering the idea of fat liberation. These women were feminists and saw fat liberation as a women’s civil rights issue. From a legal perspective they were demanding equal rights for fat people; and from a cultural perspective, they were demanding women’s worth not be rooted in their appearance, their weight.

The movement continued into the 1980s when thin was really in and anorexia was on the rise. The Fat Women’s Group was formed in London and people were protesting over what they called fat-phobic marketing. They weren’t wrong. The 1980s were rife with 6’0” tall, 110 pound supermodels.

In 1983, pop star Karen Carpenter died from complications due to anorexia. She had abused laxatives and thyroid medication for many years and reached an all time low weight of 77 pounds, before she died of heart failure and ipecac (used to induce vomiting) poisoning.

I discovered anorexia in the 1970s when I read a book called The Best Little Girl in the World. I was not anorexic at the time. But later, as I progressed in gymnastics and the pressures and weigh-ins accelerated, I would adopt some of the harmful practices that I’d learned from Kessa, the main character in that book.

The 90s brought us heroin chic and Kate Moss.

By the time Moss hit the billboards, I had dropped all the bad self-harming behaviors. I had been persuaded by Naomi Wolf’s book “The Beauty Myth,” where I came to understand my own obsessive behaviors as being influenced by a culture that values women only for their looks.

As a budding feminist, these behaviors were not in keeping with my beliefs. And I stopped. I willed it and I did it. I knew that I had value beyond the number on the scale, so why was I counting calories and obsessing over the size of my butt? I came to see it as a colossal waste of time and energy and certainly not something many men were doing. How would I achieve anything in the world if I spent the vast majority of my time worrying about my appearance? If I spent the majority of my time worrying about how I looked, didn’t that say something about where I thought my valued resided?

I stopped counting calories, and examining myself in the mirror, and weighing myself obsessively in order to align my actions with my values and to make time to forge my path in the world without distraction by self-obsession, vanity and superficiality.

Cut to: 2004. Body positivity goes mainstream. Dove launches the Real Beauty campaign.

I already worked in the fashion industry at this time. I was the US Marketing Director at Levi’s. I loved this campaign from Dove. Real women. Healthy. Curves. Stretch marks. Smiling.

Then American Eagle’s Aerie brand brought us no retouching in 2016.

All good things in my opinion!

Then it got weird.

Body positivity turned to fat positivity. And obesity was glorified and “healthy at any size” became the mantra of progressives.

Mere mention of weight loss being healthy was “fat-phobic.” Mention of some foods being “bad” was “fat-phobic.” No food is bad unless it is poison!

Then Abercrombie & Fitch went woke and brought us plus sized models and Victoria’s Secret got called out for NOT doing so, then did so, and then both brands took a nose dive.

Now we have Ozempic and MAHA (Make American Healthy Again) and who knows where this whole thing is going next.

But here’s what I really want to say (and sorry for the long lead up): why on earth, amidst all the messaging around body positivity and no body is wrong and every body is healthy is the medical establishment telling kids they can be born in the wrong body?

And, why, if some girls have penises (ridiculous, yes) are doctors cutting off penises to form cavernous “neovaginas” that have no function and are merely “canals” that must be dilated forever so as not to close up because it’s a wound not a vagina?

Why is the medical establishment validating a child’s hatred of their own body? If you are uncomfortable with puberty (who wasn’t??) well maybe you’re trans and you’re the opposite sex!

How can the progressive movement square these opposing views? Body positivity (when it comes to fat) says: No body is wrong. All bodies are healthy! (Not true, but that is what the movement asserts.) And gender ideology asserts that if a child has any discomfort with their own physicality, well, they could in fact be the opposite sex. Born into the wrong body.

There is no amount of mental gymnastics, no tortured logic that connects these opposing belief systems (if you can call them that). Well, that’s not true. The only thing that connects them is the destruction of a healthy body.

I’d love to see a return to normal body positivity. A return to embracing real women, with real curves; a return to stating vociferously that no, our worth is not in our appearance, but there is such a thing as “unhealthy” in terms of weight. It doesn’t make you a bad person. It means you may be shortening your life though. And there are ways, that don’t involve drugs like Ozempic, to make one’s body healthier. And probably one’s mind as well.

AND, girls can be more masculine and it doesn’t make them boys. And boys can be more feminine and it doesn’t make them girls. And they don’t need to cut off parts and end fertility and sexual function because they were “born in the wrong body.” There is no wrong body.

Ultimately these movements will collapse under the weight of their own lack of logic. Truth will out in the end but how many children will be harmed in the process? And what is wrong with a medical establishment, with doctors that falls prey to activist rhetoric and abandon all responsibility to patient care? Can they find their way back? I’m not so sure.