Upgrade your body image with body neutrality so that you can free yourself from all-consuming negative body image.
Body Image
Your body image is not uni-dimensional. Rather, it’s the sum of how you see, think, and feel about your body. And as a result, how you treat your body.
We can look at body image on a scale, which includes: body violence, body hatred, body neutrality, and body respect. Most women who diet (in a non-life-threatening way) will find themselves in the body hatred stage. This is the stage where a lot of your time and energy is consumed by negative thoughts about your body.When I’m working with clients in Undiet Your Life, I teach you how to manage your mind so that you can achieve body neutrality, and ultimately body respect.
Body Neutrality
The goal of body neutrality is to dial down the enormous significance that’s being given to physical attractiveness in our society. The significance of women’s beauty is what causes us to do all kinds of crazy things to look “better”, including dieting. We effectively starve ourselves in order to be beautiful.
This is important to understand… we’ve been buying into the importance of beauty to define our place in this world. If we didn’t do this, we wouldn’t diet or think we need to change the size/shape/look of our bodies.
Body Positivity
Body neutrality goes beyond body positivity, in that it’s not just about pushing back against the beauty ideals of our time. That is to say
Body Positivity challenges the beauty standards by putting forward diverse body types, sizes, skin colours, abilities…
Neutrality on the other end pushes back on all aspects of society that continue to promote beauty ideals as the ultimate accomplishment. As such, it also rejects the idea that a person’s appearance is indicative of their worth.
Body Neutrality says “How I feel about myself has nothing to do with my appearance.”
Body Positivity says: “I feel good about myself, because I know I’m beautiful at any size”.
Can you see the difference?
What you’ll learn listening to this episode:
- The 4 components of body image
- The Body Image Scale
- Why you shouldn’t aim to be body positive
- The feminist approach to body image
- Body neutrality in real life
