A couple of weekends ago, I went to the London premiere of Fattitude. It’s a documentary about fat discrimination; the prejudice that fat people experience on a day to day basis, where it comes from and how we can change it.

I loved the film and I only wish more people can see it. I’m hoping it ends up on Netflix, giving it a wider audience and the exposure it deserves.

As part of the premiere, they had a panel discussion after the screening. And there was something that was said that really resonated.

From Fat Liberation To Body Positivity

Over the last handful of years the idea of “body positivity” has taken off. Undoubtedly helped by platforms like Tumblr and Instagram. And also by companies who co-opt the message as a great way to sell you more stuff.

Body positivity has its roots in the fat liberation movement dating back to 1960s. And while the fat liberation movement was more political and focused on the rights of fat individuals, body positivity is about the acceptance of all body types.

But as one of the panel members, Sofie Hagen, pointed out, there’s actually a problematic shift that has occurred as part of this movement to body positivity.

In the fat liberation days, the focus was on changing public opinion, beliefs, and treatment of fat individuals. The idea being that it’s not those that are fat that need to change, but rather the discrimination and bigotry of others.

But with body positivity, this feels like it has shifted. While the goal is to make all body shapes acceptable, a large part of this is now on the individual to “love their body”. That the individual needs to change their thoughts, feelings, and perspective so that they can see how wonderful they actually are.

Now on the surface, I can see how this feels like helpful advice. And it is.

But the problem is…

…you’re telling people who’ve struggled and hated their body for a lifetime that now they should love it. With the added pressure that, if they aren’t able to do this or feel bad about certain parts of their appearance, they are also failing at being “body positive”.

This comment struck a chord with me.

Because while the impossible beauty standards have remained (and arguably have intensified), we’ve now added on impossible standards of emotional equanimity. Standards likely experienced only by someone who’s spent the last 3 years on silent retreat doing nothing but Loving Kindness meditation.

And these impossible standards lead to the erroneous notion that you should a) always be positive and b) love every part of your body.

So I’ve been thinking about the comment by Hagen and how I deal with this in my own practice when I’m working with clients. So below are some thoughts.

It’s ok not to love your body

While it would be lovely to live in some utopia where everyone loved their body, this MDMA-like-love-fest isn’t a reality.

It’s completely normal and understandable to have parts of your body that you don’t like. It’s also completely understandable that some people hate all parts of their body. It’s what they’ve been taught to do.

These feelings can be particularly heightened when a client is recovering from an eating disorder. When they’re changing habits that mean they are no longer restricting or are in the process of reducing restriction. Or they’ve stopped exercising. Or they’ve stopped purging but overall food intake has remained the same.

It can also be especially difficult for those who have decided to give up on dieting. While they intellectually recognise that it’s never proved to be a useful long-term solution, there have been intermittent periods of “success”. And this success, however fleeting, can be difficult to walk away from.

Because in both scenarios, even when people have despised their body, there was always the feeling this was temporary. That at some point in the not too distant future things would be different.

To now have the bubble popped and this fantasy disappear can be devastating. It’s not an overstatement to say that this experience is akin to grieving.

The reality of “this is it” can be hard. Harder still when there’s the realisation that you don’t know where things are going to end up and you don’t even like this starting point.

So to turn to a person who’s going through this situation and suggest that they just need to love their body feels like the opposite of empathy. While it may be well-intentioned and a lovely idea for them to aspire to, at this stage it seems so out of reach that the suggestion feels insulting.

Self-Compassion can be a starting place.

Self-compassion is a learned skill. I think about it in the same way as “eating in moderation”. Just knowing that this is the goal doesn’t make it so. It evolves and strengthens by practising regularly.

And there are many parts that make it a reality; “self-compassion” is the meta-skill but there are multiple ingredients that go into making the recipe.

In the area of body positivity that I’m talking about here, self-compassion happens on two levels. There’s the self-compassion in the area of how someone talks to themselves and the comments they make about their body.

But then there is the self-compassion for the judgment that then comes in about how well they are actually doing at “body positivity” and “loving their body”.

So 1) judging your body, and then 2) judging the fact that you’re judging your body.

It’s normal, especially in the beginning, to feel lost without dieting, disordered eating or an eating disorder. For many, it’s a coping skill. It gives them a sense of control or certainty. Without it, they feel untethered.

Added to this is the ingrained habit of filtering negative emotions through the lens of their body and its appearance.

Feeling uncomfortable at work because of some feedback, well it must be because of their weight.

Going through a rough patch in their relationship, obviously their body is part of the reason. 

Feeling overwhelmed with everything they’re doing – the job, the kids, doing a Masters, helping with their sick mother – and thinking it would be easier if they were slimmer.

Even when this isn’t what is consciously thought, the natural response to these situations by some people is to want to up the exercise, eat less for lunch or order that detox kit that they did last January.

It’s for all these reasons that so much of the focus with clients is for them to learn the skill of self-compassion. Not just intellectually understanding why it’s important, but to be able to practice it and experience its benefits.  

Looking At The Individual Parts

While this isn’t always the right approach, sometimes it can be helpful for me to get the client to break their body down into all its constituent parts. Starting with the top of your head and working their way down.

How do you feel about your: hair, forehead, eyes, eyebrows, eyelashes, nose, cheeks, ears, lips, teeth, chin…all the way down to your feet, toes, toenails?  

There are a couple of reasons why this can be a helpful exercise.

Discovering Nuance

Firstly, most people discover that while they say “I hate my body” actually it’s more about certain parts. There are particular areas that they dislike and bring up strong negative emotions, but equally, there are parts they feel neutral about and there are also parts they actually like.

So maybe rather than trying to change their feelings about the parts they dislike, could they simply spend more time highlighting and reminding themselves of the things they like about themselves or feel neutral about?

Because no matter how great someone’s life is, if the focus is always on the worst parts, it’s going to skew how they feel.

Stories and Cognitive Dissonance

Another reason this exercise is helpful is to hear the rationale for why people feel the way they do about certain body parts.

Regularly, there are areas that people admit don’t match up to society’s standards or are “different” but yet they like these areas or at the very least feel neutral about it.

And so the question becomes “how do you like body part x that society tells you to dislike, but yet with body part y you are so critical?” The process of exploring people’s explanations and narratives around this can be a first step to having a client see things in a different light.

Appreciating All It Can Do

Something else that can occur because of this exercise (or at other points during the process) is the realisation of what the body does irrespective of what it looks like.

There’s this appreciation that, for example, “I don’t like how my legs look but I love how they can carry me around in this world”.

Sometimes it’s not even about what the body does physically, but what’s going on behind the scenes. That it helped them get over that cold and they started to appreciate the intricacies of the immune system that made that so.

All these functions happen despite how the body has been treated over the years. The physical, verbal, and emotional abuse that this individual has directed at their body, and yet, it keeps going.

Beauty certainly has currency in this world, but this is just one aspect of what the body “does”. And for many clients, getting past the constant focus on appearance and being more mindful of all the other things the body does is a helpful lever to increase positive feelings towards their body.

I should add, that this kind of body appreciation doesn’t usually happen upfront. It takes time to really feel this and appreciate it. By “trying” to do this too early it just leads to people saying statements because they feel they should but actually don’t believe. Like they are creating some saccharine Hallmark card when they would prefer to be sending hate mail.

Perfection is not the goal

As humans, we all deal with feeling inadequate and wondering whether we are enough. Added to this, we live in a world that is biased about weight. So no matter how much work someone does on themselves, there will be times when this feels too much. And this is completely ok.

Don’t fall for the trap of replacing impossible beauty standards for impossible “body positivity”. Otherwise, you’re just replacing one feeling of failing for another.

I truly believe that people can change how they feel about their body and how they experience this world. I see it happen with my clients. But it takes time.

And the winding road to this more peaceful place is paved with self-compassion. Lots of self-compassion.