The Difference Between Body Acceptance and Body Positivity
Learning to love your body, embrace your body, and accept your body can be very challenging. Today’s society has recently switched to supporting more body positive and body acceptance movements however, what do these really mean? And is there a difference? Body positivity is a current social trend that refers to accepting and embracing equality of all body sizes, shapes, and types. The body positivity movement focuses on challenging social standards and ideals such as “thinspiration” and “fitspiration”, by focusing on the body’s abilities and functions over appearance. This movement originated in the 1960s from “fat, Black, and queer activism in response to certain bodies being so rarely visible or held as valuable in discourses and visual media'' (Griffin et al., 2022). Body acceptance, however, is one’s ability to always accept your body even on days where you may not feel happy or comfortable with it. It is no surprise that you may not be thrilled with your body all the time, the idea is that with body acceptance, you can develop your ability to still love and accept it.
Body acceptance can be a useful tool for individuals struggling with low self-esteem, perfectionism, negative body image, and eating disorders because it allows space to embrace all and any insecurities, doubts, and frustrations that come with learning to love your body. Body acceptance acknowledges that loving your body every minute of every day is unrealistic, and that, through care, compassion, and respect you can learn to accept yourself and your body, including the insecurities, doubts, and frustrations.
So how can one improve their body acceptance?
1. Do activities and hobbies that make you feel good about yourself. Whether it is movement related or not, finding activities that make you feel proud of what your body is capable of regardless of size will help to improve your body acceptance. Dance your heart out, go for a stroll in nature, try a yoga class, cuddle up on the couch with a good book! Feed your soul, mind, and body.
2. Practice positive self-talk and affirmations. Whenever you notice yourself talking negatively about your body, challenge those thoughts. Try rephrasing the thoughts to a positive or neutral comment. Write yourself a positive quote on your mirror to remind yourself of your true beauty.
3. Ask yourself what you love about yourself that is not related to your body. Start a list of all the things you are proud of, maybe you are a stellar mom, a good friend, can sing a beautiful tune or cook an amazing meal, write a list you can go back and read on the hard days.
4. Wear clothes that you feel comfortable in. If it doesn’t fit right, doesn’t make you feel good in it, reminds you of a different version of yourself, get rid of them! Buy and wear clothes that not only make you feel confident in your body but that also allow you to express yourself! You can always donate any old clothes too! 5. Stop comparing yourself to others. Comparison to others is one of the major factors in body dissatisfaction.
Griffin M, Bailey KA, Lopez KJ. #BodyPositive? A critical exploration of the body positive movement within physical cultures taking an intersectionality approach. Front Sports Act Living. 2022 Oct 10;4:908580. doi: 10.3389/fspor.2022.908580. PMID: 36299403