Body Neutrality Is Becoming The New Body Positivity

Body positivity may no longer be the buzzword for inclusivity and body acceptance.

After dissecting its meaning, many people feel that the phrase not only leaves a vast majority of women underrepresented, especially many mid-sized women, but that it also defeats its core purpose to help us obsess less with our shape and weight.

As an answer to that, we get body neutrality. Body neutrality is basically the idea that it doesn’t really matter what your body looks like, and moreover, that you don’t even have to love your belly flab and cellulite thighs. You simply accept how your body looks and go on with your life, because, you know, life is more than gushing over how much we love our bodies on social media.

my soul home... ...she is of the ocean....home is cultivated. it is built. sometimes from the ashes. sometimes from a deep remembering. like rediscovering the path you had forgotten. home is born from stillness and only found by those brave enough to go within...🌿🌊🐾 🌙🌬

A post shared by Daphne Ilandere (@daphneilandere) on Aug 28, 2018 at 1:32pm PDT

Body neutrality is simply raising the peace flag, and that’s fair enough. Not all women who lead happy or content lives are one hundred percent happy with every aspect of their bodies. Why should they be, life isn’t just an image, right?

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Body neutrality, as the Independent explains, is focusing on what your body is capable of and not what it looks like. Your body is doing a great job because it’s the vessel in which you experience life.

This morning I got out of bed, stood naked in front of the mirror and didn’t hate my body.
It’s been a long time!#edrecovery #bodyneutrality #bodydysmorphia
— My Name is Beth Anne (@Bethannestagram) August 22, 2018

It sounds less marketable than body positivity, mainly because talking about how you don’t like to talk about your body surely has its limitations. But the message it carries is an inspiration to numerous women who are getting tired of the ambiguity and contradiction that surrounds body positivity. As well as the catfights over who has the right to call themselves a legit part of the movement.

Body neutrality is a more inclusive message. Everyone should try body neutrality, as we're sure they already do by now, even if they aren’t familiar with the term. Does body neutrality also imply that as a society we are growing tired of defining who we are through images on social media? Perhaps it does and we are going back to basics. Even if that’s the case, our relationship with our bodies nowadays still beseeches a formal definition.

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