It's giving strength

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Watching a dancer glide across the floor with big catlike finesse made me realize how much respect I give to hard things. It takes an immense amount of control, strength, and grit to dance well. I’m not alone. As a species, we admire these qualities in sport, wits, and art. We appreciate the perseverance it takes to achieve a remarkable feat.

A girl draped on the floor turned to her friend, “It’s giving. His body is… woww”. I agreed, and it made me think about the way we view our bodies. Why do we admire muscular, defined, svelt, ample proportions? We don’t swoon over stick-thin or morbidly obese. It’s the same reason we admire athletes, artists, and people who do amazing things: It’s hard to get the Goldilocks Bod.

There’s a culture of body positivity running through the developed world, but it’s not like the Rubenesque depictions of the Renaissance. It’s primarily a glorification of fat bodies. Like most things, we’ve taken things too far. Promoting acceptance of who we are is beautiful, and we can do it while acknowledging where we’ve gone too far. Part of accepting who we are is recognizing where we have the ability to do better. We’ve just forgotten that last part.

Body positivity should be about living a healthy lifestyle - because it’s hard. Indulgence isn’t sinful if you don’t believe in sin, but there is still something naughty about it. To body positivists, taking more than you need is abhorrent when it comes to money, but when it comes to food, we can gorge free from guilt. We don’t hate anorexics as much as we hate fat people, and I wonder if it’s because culturally, we respect their abstinence as difficult. Not caving to what your body wants is a challenge, but some people derive pleasure from that empty feeling. They use a little pain to cover up a big one - and (not so) secretly we respect them for that. Either way, restricting and gorging are two sides of the same unhealthy coin.

Today it’s all too easy to get fat, and that’s why I don’t respect it. We have unlimited access to cheap, fattening foods, sugar-loaded beverages, and we sit on our asses all day long scrolling the internet. I still have hope for human health when I see someone respect a healthy body. When she said “It’s giving” I knew what she meant. He gave a lot to get that body. He sweated, ached, and chose healthy foods over the ones he really wanted. If he hadn’t, he’d be like most everyone else, unremarkable and fat.

Fat doesn’t mean “bad” to me. It just doesn’t garner my respect or admiration. I admire people who exude strength.

an admirable position