The Shame of Body Acceptance
Last week, a friend posted a tweet that read: Reminder: When you congratulate someone on their weight-loss, you may be complimenting them on their eating disorder. An argument ensued. Basically, women argued that commenting on someone’s weight is never good. I wanted to let it pass by, but I couldn’t. Their logic was that you never know why someone lost weight, so you don’t want to be rude or hurtful. I get that. But then, there was another layer: the idea that we should never comment on looks. The idea that the outside holds too much power and commenting on looks just adds to that stifling domination of society. We should love ourselves as we are. Okay. Yes. We should love ourselves. Loving ourselves is huge. I’ve always advocated for that. But what does it mean to love ourselves? How can we, on one hand, be proud of our bodies and deny our physicality? Be proud of you, but don’t ever comment on looks. Your body is beautiful, but there is no such thing as beauty. It’s an either/or