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Nimesha Subramanian

LOVE THY SELF

"Loving your body isn’t believing it looks good, it’s knowing your body is good regardless of how it looks."


Most of us have heard of the body positivity movement. It is a social movement that focuses on loving all bodies regardless of their shape, size, skin colour, physical disabilities and gender while trying to break down the beauty standards prevalent in society. While its intentions are good, unconditionally loving our body and appearance at all times can seem unrealistic to a lot of people, considering that 80% of women and 34% of men reported being dissatisfied with their bodies and appearances.

We are conditioned to treat people who fit the universal standard of beauty or those who have "pretty privilege" better than those who do not. It shows how shallow we as people can be at times promoting beauty as something that is essential and indicates one's worth. The body positivity movement emphasizes that all bodies are beautiful, further putting beauty and our physical appearance on a pedestal. This makes us obsess over our outward appearance forgetting that there are much more aspects to us.

Body neutrality, on the other hand, is a movement where loving your body isn’t a prerequisite for feeling good about yourself. The goal is to dial down the enormous significance that is being given to physical attractiveness in our society. It helps us focus on what our bodies can do and are capable of, rather than what they look like. We are ultimately much much more than our body and appearance. This movement encourages us to detach our self worth from the perception of our appearance. At its core, it is the idea that we can exist in this world without having to think about our outward appearance. We are allowed to love ourselves and are allowed to move through this world comfortably, without the pressure to love what we look like. We can simply exist and be worthy of respect without thinking about our body at all.

"Loving your body isn’t believing it looks good, it’s knowing your body is good regardless of how it looks."


Most of us have heard of the body positivity movement. It is a social movement that focuses on loving all bodies regardless of their shape, size, skin colour, physical disabilities and gender while trying to break down the beauty standards prevalent in society. While its intentions are good, unconditionally loving our body and appearance at all times can seem unrealistic to a lot of people, considering that 80% of women and 34% of men reported being dissatisfied with their bodies and appearances.

We are conditioned to treat people who fit the universal standard of beauty or those who have "pretty privilege" better than those who do not. It shows how shallow we as people can be at times promoting beauty as something that is essential and indicates one's worth. The body positivity movement emphasizes that all bodies are beautiful, further putting beauty and our physical appearance on a pedestal. This makes us obsess over our outward appearance forgetting that there are much more aspects to us.

Body neutrality, on the other hand, is a movement where loving your body isn’t a prerequisite for feeling good about yourself. The goal is to dial down the enormous significance that is being given to physical attractiveness in our society. It helps us focus on what our bodies can do and are capable of, rather than what they look like. We are ultimately much much more than our body and appearance. This movement encourages us to detach our self worth from the perception of our appearance. At its core, it is the idea that we can exist in this world without having to think about our outward appearance. We are allowed to love ourselves and are allowed to move through this world comfortably, without the pressure to love what we look like. We can simply exist and be worthy of respect without thinking about our body at all.




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