This post is awesome.

[feuervogel]

Via rydra_wong

Stop telling people to love their bodies.

Every time I go to the supermarket or the drugstore, I get treated to an endless barrage of magazines helpfully pointing out what is currently too monstrous about my body for anyone to see. I thus can really get behind the idea of body positivity. I think it's a great stance to have, and would like to see it more widespread.

But here's the thing: It's not something that can be forced on people. You can't shame someone into thinking they're a stone-cold fox. Snarking on someone for being self-conscious for whatever reason (hey, it's not like there might be any cultural conditioning behind it, amirite?), isn't really going to help.

Comments

[intravenusann.livejournal.com]

OH THANK CHRIST. I want to hug this person. FULL ON HUG.

Making someone feel like a bad person for not liking themselves is not actually going to make them like themselves.

[ladydreamer.livejournal.com]

Lacking context, I'm not sure how I feel about that. Who are we telling to stop saying to love your body? And what definition of love? (Nurture, cherish, accept, masturbate?) How are people being forced to love their bodies? By gunpoint? If the first answer is the media, we know that it is bullshit anyway. Love your body; buy our cellulite creme.

As someone who has had to deal with chronic pain over the last several years that has only gotten worse as of late and has been fighting even at the basic level of weight not to hate my body to the point of hurting it, I think I'm not really pleased with an outright damnation of the concept.