The Body Positivity Movement Isn’t Dead (Even If It Feels Like It Is)
We’ve been here before, and most millennials will tell you it didn’t go well for us. It’s not GLP-1 itself that’s the problem, nor bariatric surgeries, nor one person’s decision to lose weight. It’s the resurgence of pro-ana thinking and content in the form of #SkinnyTok. This is the misuse of medications and other tools to achieve a level of thinness that has nothing to do with health or happiness. And it is the lack of attention or respect towards those who TO DO live in larger bodies and are not actively seeking to lose weight for any reason.
“What makes this moment so confronting is the visibility,” says Gordon. “We briefly observed greater body diversity in mainstream spaces, and now we’re seeing those bodies disappear again. Many people who came into public view with non-thin bodies have since lost weight, and when their bodies shrink, it’s noticeable. This shift can feel like regression, even if the underlying value system never really changed. This cycle highlights the continuing obstacles facing the movement.”
I guess this is where my naivety got the better of me when writing about these issues in the past tense. Anti-fat prejudices and the conflation of extreme thinness with beauty, discipline and health have never disappeared. But this moment feels closer to the toxicity of the early 2000s, when tabloids freely and unapologetically compared celebrity bikini bodies and bloggers speculated about every pound lost or gained. “What has changed is not the pressure to be thin, but the scale and speed of its amplification by technology,” says Gordon. “Drugs, filters, AI, cosmetic procedures and heavily edited images intensify unrealistic standards, making them even less accessible and more pervasive. »
Eating disorder specialist Alyssa Mass, a licensed marriage and family therapist, says cultural waves are rarely the true mark of the “beginning” or “end” of anything, including the body positivity movement. “Frankly, I think this type of absolute black-and-white thinking is more dangerous than anything else,” she says. “The pendulum is swinging, and medical and technological advances are always changing our world and our culture. We don’t need to sensationalize these changes. We can, however, continue to learn, grow, and have a healthy dialogue about what is happening around us and how we want to engage.”
