The history of the body positivity movement

I love the way you look - it’s the message most people on your Instagram account know.

This is because the body’s positivity movement has filled our timeline for years. Some think it promotes unhealthy lifestyles and encourages obesity, but proponents of the movement say it’s about self-acceptance and not that your physical appearance delays you.

While it may be common on social media today, the roots of body positivity are not well known and are often disputed.

We have asked Tigress Osborn, who will soon be president of the U.S. National Fat Acceptance Promotion Association (NAAFA), to study the history of the movement on our behalf. NAAFA is an organization that was key to establishing the modern body positivity movement, so we have asked you to tell us how it started and how it evolved.

Every day in our lives is reminded that no one’s body is good enough. It could be your friend’s DM about how much he hates his hair. It could be a new diet company ad that promises a better life if you lose a few pounds. You really can’t have that stain, what about those eyebrows? Just not.

Give your body positivity. The positivity of the body tells us that we are really already okay. Loving our body is more important than appearance. We don’t have to listen to this toxic culture that makes us hate ourselves.

But the positivity of the body can also be much more than fighting a weak self-esteem day. You can question capitalism, challenge the patriarchy, and ask us to investigate whether our thoughts about the body are fat-phobic, sexist, racist, or capable.

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But how and where did it start?

The positivity of the body begins with the Fat Rights movement

In 1969, a young New York engineer named Bill Fabrey was very angry at the way the world treated his obese wife, Joyce. I had read an article a couple of years earlier by an obese man, Lew Louderbach, about the unfair ways of lean people. He made copies and gave them to everyone who knew. He then brought together a small group of people and created a national association to help fat Americans (now known as the National Association for the Advance of Acceptance of Fat, or NAAFA, the world’s oldest organization defending the rights of fats).

The treatment of fat people also angered a number of California feminists throughout the United States. They formed the Underground of Fat. What NAAFA called fat acceptance, they called Fat Liberation. In 1973, they had published a groundbreaking Fat Manifesto. He demanded "equal rights for obese people in all walks of life." He also called the industry "reductoras" (also known as diet culture) and declared them enemies.

Through fat activism, people are motivated by the leadership they saw in civil rights and other equality and freedom movements. Radical fat activists saw the release of fat linked to other battles against oppression. But mainstream fat activism, which is usually associated with NAAFA at the time, often rules out the voices of people suffering from color. They thought that trying to address more than one topic at a time might weaken their message. Many white activists also believed that because black and other color communities seemed to accept more obese people, it meant that obese colored people simply didn’t need fat. Unfortunately, especially in the beginning, this movement that helps marginalized people often displaces entire groups of people themselves.

Fat folx hit the streets

The fathers' rights movement continued to grow. In the 1980s, enthusiasm for fat release began to spread around the world. The London Fat Women’s Group was founded in the mid-1980s and has been active for years.

People did not use the term body positivity in the 70s, 80s and 90s, but fat activists could be seen in daytime conversations and other outlets claiming that the diet industry was a scam. In the 1990s, overweight activists chose the White House, staged demonstrations outside gyms with phobic advertising, and danced alongside floats in the San Francisco Pride parade. His talk of loving his own body confuses some listeners and inspires others. If someone who looked like them could learn to love their bodies, maybe no one could.

Large bodies online

In the early 2000s, the Internet was one of the most important places where shame and love for the body spread. Anonymity led to harassment, but it also led to self-expression. As 90s Message Boards and chat rooms gave way to social media, obese people who had found community activism continued to build it digitally. Fat activists moved from AOL groups and NAAFA online forums to Tumbler and Instagram. Hashtags and Facebook groups helped people create new ways. A new generation spread a vibration known as Body Positivity.

The positivity of the body grows ... then you forget where it came from?

The positivity of the body became a buzzword on social media. Its variations (body love, positive body and of course #BOPO) have now been used millions of times. Today, for every celebrity company that represents a diet company, there is another that reminds us to love ourselves exactly as we are.

But many of the most popular body positivity models have “flawed” bodies only when they remove their clothes and draw arrows to indicate their flaws. Prominently obese influencers, those who are no doubt overweight no matter what they have, also have their own followers, but they are treated with more harassment, more bans, and more pressure to “praise obesity”. The influencers of the conflict, who dealt with repression in more than one area, were often the most outspoken. While obese people’s activism hadn’t always made room for black and brown obese people, black and brown fat people were better able to create their own spaces online.

Unfortunately, as more and more people started using hashtags like #loveyourbody and #allbodiesarebeautiful, the marginalized organs of society have been marginalized in the same movement they started.

Some of the body-positive believers say that weight loss speech should be included in messages related to body positivity because weight loss makes people feel better. Even top diet companies describe themselves as positive about the body. Some activists still see the positivity of the body as a gateway to more radical liberation movements in the body. For others, the sentence has become so irrelevant that they have introduced variations or simply do not use it at all.

The positivity of the body is nothing without its Fat Activist grandparents of all genders. It’s also nothing without black women and women reinforcing the message at the beginning of the trend. The women who wrote the Fat Manifesto concluded it by saying, "We are committed to achieving these goals together." If together there are no greasy, black people that allowed for body positivity, as well as other marginalized bodies, it is not body positivity at all.

 

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