When body shamers tell you to “love your body”

If there’s one upside to living in the world as a woman these days, it’s that more and more of us are actually having a conversation about body positivity, and we’re having it loudly. But that doesn’t mean we’ve worked out the “right” way to talk about our bodies. One common refrain in the body positivity movement is that everyone should love their bodies no matter what. But telling women to love their bodies also feels like body shaming a lot of the time.

The relentless orders from celebs, brands, and your well-intentioned co-worker to be proud of your body at all times and “not give a damn” about what anyone thinks can be just as traumatic for people with body image issues. And it’s also just annoying.

Don’t get us wrong here:

Calling out body shaming when you hear it, goading brands into celebrating all shapes, and giving out all the prayer hands emojis to your friends on social media for being #FLAWLESS is a good thing. It feels like we’re all heading in the right direction to some utopian future where fitting room lighting is always perfect and internet trolls (or your grandmother) never use your waist size as an insult.

But we’re a long way away from that and so many of us still have a lot of residual body image issues we deal with on the daily. Although the sentiment sounds innocent, being told to “always love your body” can get in the way of doing that important work.

First of all, stop telling us what to do. Seriously! When you tell a woman to love her body, it’s just one more instance of the world telling her what to do with said body. Just like the world used to tell us that we had to be super thin, flawlessly curvy, and that being fat meant no one would ever love us and we didn’t deserve cute clothes anyway, the insistence to always love our bodies feels a lot like one more command from society. Be proud! Workout because it feels good! And whatever you do, never have even one criticism of yourself or point out something that you want to change. Who can keep up with that?

It’s almost more exhausting than the all the old, patriarchal crap we’re trying to dismantle by embracing our cellulite and going makeup free on social media, especially because this time, it’s mostly coming from other women whose intentions are seriously on our side. The body shaming is now coming from inside the house.

Aside from it being one more thing to add to your to-do list, the way brands and the media are telling women to love their bodies still seems to hinge on traditional beauty standards. It’s important to listen and pay attention to who is speaking to whom when you hear someone say that *all* women should love their bodies. It has to be inclusive. It can’t be that women can only love their bodies up to a certain number on the scale or a certain shade of skin.

There’s still something strangely fat-phobic about the way women are told to love their bodies. Remember when Amy Schumer said she was taken aback when people called her “brave” for posing naked in the 2016 Pirelli calendar? A lot of times it feels like being told to love your body is a little condescending in that same way.

Like, you should love that you’re not “perfect” and embrace your “imperfections.” Which means that somewhere out there, there is an ideal body out there, but we don’t have to beat up ourselves up anymore for not embodying that ideal. Nah, we’re not buying it.

(Source;hellogiggles.com)