Honestly, The Term 'Body Positive' Lost Its Meaning A Long Time Ago

Aerie It was also the time I, a person who has grappled with a love of high fashion and a body type it largely ignores, started writing about fashion for HuffPost. “Is a diet book a fair target for our anger and disappointment about the appropriation of body positivity?” If I’m being honest, the impact and meaning of the term body positivity lost its meaning for me a long time ago, at the hands of corporations. There’s also the fact that what should be a mission toward all-encompassing inclusivity has taken on its own form of exclusivity, thanks to Bitch Media’s Evette Dionne explored that aspect of the movement last week for the aptly titled article “The Fragility of Body Positivity: How a Radical Movement Lost Its Way.” In the piece, she details exactly how the body positive movement has actually isolated people who don’t fall into a certain category that it promotes, citing a viral photo a man posted of his “curvy wife” on Instagram in August. Rutter has labeled this erasure ‘Socially Acceptable Body Positivity.’ “On social media, it actually gets worse for fat bodies: We’re not just being erased from body positivity, fat women are being actively vilified,” she wrote. “Health has become the stick with which to beat fat people with, and the benchmark for whether body positivity should include someone.” So, yeah, it’s a shitty title for a book.