Why does body positivity feel hard? (March 2025)

Carrie Dennett, MPH, RDN

What thoughts come to mind when you hear or read the words “body positivity? Maybe, “It’s wonderful! It changed my life!” or “It’s an idea I’m working on incorporating into my life…and some days are better than others” or “Feel positive about THIS body? Yeah, right” or even, “If I feel positive about my body the way it is, I’ll have no incentive to exercise.”

Body positivity can mean very different things—and be interpreted in very different ways—by different people. To understand why that is, let’s look at a brief and complicated history of the term “body positivity.”

Currently, “body positivity” is a buzzy catchphrase, popular with Instagram influencers, advertisers, and diet companies. But the origins of the body positive movement run much deeper. Body positivity has its roots in late 1960s social justice movements created by and for women in marginalized bodies—particularly fat, Black, queer, and disabled bodies—to talk about the oppression they experience in society and fight back against discrimination in the workplace, doctor’s offices and other public settings. 

In 1996 the Berkley-based nonprofit The Body Positive began working to end the harmful consequences of negative body image, especially among teens and young adults. These consequences can include eating disorders, anxiety, depression, substance abuse, cutting, suicide and relationship violence. 

These ideas of body positivity acknowledge how challenging it is to feel anything other than disdain or even hatred towards our bodies in the culture we live in and strive to prevent real harm. But like many good things, body positivity has been co-opted.The original body positive movement was about stopping appearance-based oppression, but the more modern manifestation is about expanding what’s viewed as beautiful. Not the same thing. 

Flash forward to 2012, and influencer culture begins to take hold of the idea of body positivity, first with plus-size influencers using #BodyPositive and #BoPo on social media, followed by thinner influencers who tended to focus on loving themselves despite body “imperfections” such as cellulite. 

While people of all shapes and sizes can struggle with body image, and benefit from body positivity, the body positive movement was not intended to glorify six-pack abs. Society already does that. Taking body positivity in this direction brings the subtext that only certain bodies deserve positive feelings and regard. The further your body is from the “ideal,” the harder it may feel that you’ll ever feel positive about your body. 

Another problematic aspect of the modern, co-opted version of body positivity is the idea that we should love our bodies all the time, and that if we don’t, we’re doing body positivity “wrong.”If you believe that you are supposed to feel positive about your body all the time, then on those days you don’t, you’ve just discovered another way to feel like you’ve failed. It’s like diet culture déjà vu.

The reality is that even if you feel good about your body most of the time, you are not going to feel that way all the time. It might be helpful to set aside striving for “body positivity,” which is really a social media-fed cultural idea, in favor of working towards “positive body image,” which is not exactly the same thing but does have actual research to help us understand it. 

Positive and negative body image are not merely opposite ends of the same spectrum—they aren’t even on the same spectrum. You can experience positive and negative body image, and you can even experience both things simultaneously. Also, having positive body image is not the same as having high levels of body satisfaction. If you like how your body looks, this doesn’t necessarily mean you have positive body image. That’s OK, because the various elements of positive body image contribute to well-being above and beyond whatever negative body image someone might experience. These elements include:

• Accepting that body image is flexible and fluid from day-to-day and across our lifespans. This includes taking a non-judgmental stance towards the sensations, perceptions, feelings, thoughts and beliefs that make up your experience in your body while engaging in life in ways that are meaningful to you and aligned with your values. An example of this would be not letting thoughts of “I’m too fat to wear a bathing suit” stop you from going to the water aerobics class you love or going to the beach with your kids. It also involves countering negative thoughts with statements that affirm the body image flexibility and fluidity, such as “I’m not happy with the way I look today, and that’s okay, everyone feels like that sometimes.”
• Body appreciation—or accepting that you don’t have to love how you look in order to appreciate what your body does for you and not feel like you have to change your body.
• Understanding that your self-worth is not tied to your appearance and celebrating inner strengths that have nothing to do with appearance, such as your unique personality, qualities and traits. 
• Nurturing and respecting your body, taking care of it with adaptive self-care behaviors such as intuitive eating and joyful physical activity, and investing in your appearance in an adaptive way, such as wearing clothing that is comfortable and enjoyable.
• Reframing beauty as a broad concept that includes all bodies.
• Taking steps to filter social media content that is unhelpful in favor of body neutral content, and taking “opposite action,” which is doing something helpful to push against unhelpful thoughts.
• Being mindful of your body talk. This includes refusing to engage in disparaging body talk, showing yourself and your body compassion, reflecting on and challenging unhelpful body thoughts, redirecting body conversations with others and about others
• Finding a community of like-minded individuals. This may also involve activism.

If you’re looking for additional resources, here are a few books that may be helpful:

• “More Than A Body: Your Body Is an Instrument, Not an Ornament” by Lindsay and Lexie Kite
• “The Body Is Not An Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love” by Sonya Renee Taylor
• “Reclaiming Body Trust: A Path to Healing and Liberation” by Hilary Kinavey and Dana Sturtevant
• “Positive Body Image Workbook” by Nichole Wood-Barcalow and Tracy Tylka

References:

Alleva JM, Tylka TL, Martijn C, Waldén MI, Webb JB, Piran N. “I’ll never sacrifice my well-being again:” The journey from negative to positive body image among women who perceive their body to deviate from societal norms. Body Image. 2023 Jun;45:153-171. 

Tylka TL, Wood-Barcalow NL. What is and what is not positive body image? Conceptual foundations and construct definition. Body Image. 2015 Jun;14:118-29. 

Wood-Barcalow NL, Alleva JM, Tylka TL. Revisiting positive body image to demonstrate how body neutrality is not new. Body Image. 2024 Sep;50:101741.