Say goodbye to body positivity and embrace body neutrality

Our bodies are amazing things, regardless of how they look. Photo / Getty

The term “body neutrality” was conceived in the mid-2010s but was birthed into the mainstream media consciousness during the 2019 interview British actor Jameela Jamil gave to Glamour magazine, in which she gave the following quote, which was immediately repeated in a wealth of stories and social media posts across the world: “Imagine just not thinking about your body. You’re not hating it. You’re not loving it. You’re just a floating head. I’m a floating head wandering through the world.”

That idea, dropped into a society that has for generations placed more value on looking good than anything else, had an immediate impact. Other celebrities jumped on the bandwagon, most notably Taylor Swift, who said in an interview with music show host Zane Lowe: “We have amazing women out there like Jameela Jamil saying, ‘I’m not trying to spread body positivity. I’m trying to spread body neutrality, where I can sit here and not think about what my body is looking like.’”

Actress Jameela Jamil speaks out about body neutrality. Photo / Getty Images

Unlike body positivity, body neutrality isn’t interested in your feelings about how you look. It doesn’t want to encourage you to feel better about the way you look because it’s not interested in how your body looks; it’s interested in what it does.

Body neutrality says our bodies are not objects to be admired or otherwise, but things that serve a function, that move you around, allow you to think, pump and oxygenate your blood and so on. We know all this, of course, but how often do we think about our body’s functions, as opposed to whether people might admire it on the beach?

The person frequently credited with beginning the body neutrality movement is body image coach and author Anne Poirier, who wrote about it in the mid-2010s. She described the concept in an interview with the Washington Post last year: “On one side is body hatred, and on the other is body love. I call body neutrality a resting place from the chaos of your mind, and from the external voices of societal pressure. This is a place where you don’t have to love your body, but you don’t have to hate it, either.”

It’s such a simple, powerful and obvious idea that it’s a testament to the power of our obsession with our bodies that it has taken so long to get here.

Dr Lesley Gray is a University of Otago academic whose research includes work on risk, equity, and ethics for marginalised groups and who also practises body neutrality in her own life. She says: “We see in magazines and on television that so much is tied into the physical appearance that we can forget that our bodies are amazing things, regardless of how it looks.”

Dr Lesley Gray, University of Otago. Photo / Getty Images

Gray says that ending our fixation on our bodies is particularly challenging for “people whose body would be represented as a fat body” because these people are told from a very young age that their body is diseased and ugly. People can find it extremely difficult to be body neutral about themselves in such cases, she says, “Because we all believe the hype.”

Words like “mindfulness” and “zen” are sometimes used in conjunction with body neutrality, because of the requirement to put aside one’s active mind, which is so frequently trying to judge. This is very different from the exhortations to love your body that come with the body positivity movement, and there’s evidence to suggest it’s a healthier approach. A 2009 study in Psychological Science, for instance, suggests that mantras commonly used in the body positivity movement are not helpful and can even be harmful.

Gray says: “I appreciate that my body has jobs. It fascinates me that my body can do such complicated things without me even having to think about it. I know when I’ve sat at my desk for many hours, my body wants to stretch, and it usually feels good once I’ve had a stretch. My body doesn’t function well for me to run. My knees don’t like it. But I give my body a lot of swimming. I do feed my body with quite a few veges.”

Changing our thinking to be body neutral is difficult, she says, with our long-held and entrenched beliefs about appearance, particularly when it comes to size.

“There are long-held views that are very difficult to get away from. If I was to show you a picture of a thin person in a suit versus a fat person in a suit, you’d probably want to employ the thin person because somehow you’d think that they were going to be better at the job, which is rubbish. You don’t know that from somebody’s appearance.

“And part of that does relate to the media – the way in which the media constantly portrays the fat body as lazy, ugly, something not to aspire to.”

That is changing, she says, but it’s not going to happen quickly.

“There are still very deep-seated beliefs in the population, in which people have biases. They might not talk about them outwardly, but we do have biases.”

Influencer Jess Quinn had her right leg amputated when she was 9 and so was immediately forced into a situation of vulnerability about her body, which she says most people don’t begin to experience until their teens or later.

Jess Quinn walks the runway during the Jockey show at New Zealand Fashion Week 2018. Photo / Getty Images

Quinn first gained serious public attention when she posted a photo to Instagram from a shoot she’d done in the hopes of getting modelling work. The photo, in which her prosthetic blade is prominent, went viral, and she gained 10,000 followers almost overnight. She got a contract with a New York modelling agency, appeared in media around the world, did a TED Talk and went on Dancing with the Stars.

For a long time afterwards, her big talking point on social media was about body positivity, but the more she thought about it, the more she came to realise it didn’t capture her experience.

“I was thinking about how I don’t exactly look in the mirror and go, ‘Oh, my gosh, that’s the coolest leg I’ve ever seen! I love it! That’s the sexiest leg I’ve ever seen,’ or anything like that because it’s just not. But I don’t look in the mirror and hate my body. So I guess the idea of body positivity just didn’t work for me because I didn’t feel the need to feel positive about it, just to accept it and live beyond my body image, if that makes sense. So, body neutrality is just a lot better for me. I use the word body acceptance a lot more these days, which I think of as the same as body neutrality.”

She says that, for her, it’s not just about accepting her body for what it is but also for the fact that it’s going to change “100,000 times” in her life.

She is far from perfect, she says, and has days where she doesn’t want to look in the mirror and can’t bear the thought of wearing anything in her wardrobe.

“We all have those days, and I think that also goes in hand with body neutrality and body acceptance. It’s being able to have those moments and then go, screw it, I’m still going to the party.”

She’s getting married next month and says she’s found it mind-blowing how social media algorithms are trying to feed her body-related information ahead of the wedding.

“I don’t think you can ever escape it, but it’s about having your North Star to come back to and be, like, ‘I’ve lost my way, this is not good for me, let’s get back to what’s important.’”

Even the day before speaking for this interview, she was, she says, struggling with her feelings about her body. “I was like, I hate how my leg looks right now. It looks terrible.” The important thing, though, she says, was that she put shorts on and left the house.

“I think that’s what body acceptance and body neutrality is – not the fact that I’m not saying those things, as much as I wish that I wasn’t. It’s the fact that I’m not letting it stop me living my life. I’m still going to wear the shorts because it’s hot outside. And I think that’s where I’m at in my journey. I’m still affected by it in some way, but I’m not letting it stop me living my life.”