Joining The Body Positivity Movement

If you strip all the social rules away from the bias photographers and magazines, television, fashion scouting criteria and just applied the idea of no more exclusion…. body dissatisfaction would plummet. Ladies and gentleman, I’d like to introduce you to The Body Positivity Movement.

After seeing in the new series of 'Love Island' (to most cynic’s dismay), seeing all of the tweets and hearing of conversations about how stunning the new islanders are, but also just how similar the islanders body shapes are… it made me realise just how bizarre the show is. Previous winner, Cara Delahoyde, even publicly joked not even she would qualify for the line up nowadays. Exposed to a sea of every age group, those with body dissatisfaction issues and maybe those with eating disorder history it is unfortunately far too easy to be influenced by the medias 5% accurate body ideals. Ever since I was able to read I was exposed to bias media perceptions, as we all are. But how is it appropriate to project barely even a decimal proportion of what the worlds population actually look like as an ideal… with red circles around celebrities who dare to be less or more 7 stone on a beach with a tan in magazines, reality television only employing certain cast members and social media being easier to access than ever.

The affect of self esteem is an undeniably powerful tool to get a market audience to buy your product, use your dangerous tea detox drinks in pretty packaging or follow the socially constructed norms. It is okay to be bigger, to be smaller, to have brunette hair, to have red hair, to wear glasses, to be able bodied or dis-abled bodied, and amazingly its okay to not be 'white British from a wealthy background'. It is culture preference that creates a false leading light of how to ‘fit in’. Every stretch mark, every small waist or big waist, every hair or socially considered flaw should be celebrated for that is what makes us unique in the billions that make up the planet.

(Did you know, wide hips and increased fat shows signs of oestrogen production and that pocket of fat you have at the bottom of your belly is to protect the reproductive organs)

After all, who wants to be identified as the one who calorie counts or who refuses to be in pictures? I’d much rather be identified as funny, or intelligent, who is full of ambition. There is no competition between us as humans, after all insecurities aren’t made up from thin air… we have the media, societies negativity and small-minded illusions to thank. The insults that we hear almost on a regular basis ‘fat’, ‘weird’ are all based on somebody using them as words for negative impact despite their original definition not being negative atall. For example the word ‘idiot’ was once used a term to speak about somebody who is not neuro-typical like the majority, however now it is used as a negative insult.

As you see, although it is difficult to unwind a lifetime of negative comments from aunt Pat every annual family gathering or Instagram 'Explore' page being full of skinny bikini pics, The Body Positivity Movement wants us to reclaim societies oddly constructed behaviours. So, who's with us?

Influence- Megan Jayne Crabbe.