The Lies We Tell to Appear Body Positive
By: Nikola Grace Radley
Tags: Women, Psychology, Body Positive, Beauty, Self-awareness

The Lies We Tell to Appear Body Positive

The truth is most of what we project in regard to beauty isn’t what we really believe.

How many times have you told your friends that they still look great when they have gained weight?

Or, when they are complaining about a specific part of their body, let’s say very thin lips or big ears have you said:

“Oh but that’s what I love about you, it's part of your personality”

“If someone doesn’t accept that, they don’t accept you”

or

“You honestly can’t even notice it”

Now think — did you mean what you said? I mean really? Or do you think that its what you should say to sound supportive? Would you feel content if you gained weight or had the same feature?

No one wants to admit they aren’t the person they project they are.

If you answered honestly I think most of us would feel at most disgusted with ourselves and at least a tad ashamed. Truthfully most of us aren’t as evolved as what we like to believe.

To remind you, this is the definition of body positivity:

Body positivity is a social movement initially created to empower and shed light on marginalized bodies not shown in the media, whilst challenging the ways in which society presents and views the physical body.

No one wants to admit they aren’t the person they project they are. Even more of us are in denial that we truly don’t uphold the values of embracing our natural selves and conform to the body ideals of a patriarchal society.

Zac Efron. Kevin Winter/Getty Images; Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

I’ll give you two real-life examples of conflict between what we say and what we believe with beauty.

Firstly me — I have/had a natural gap in my front teeth, for years I toyed with the idea of closing it. When mentioning this to people, I was met with comments of:

“-but I love your gap — it makes you well YOU”

“Your teeth are fine. I can’t see the problem” or

“Your gap is part of your identity” etc.

Well, I closed my gap. I did composite bonding on my front top teeth, and I am super happy with my results. I don’t feel less me if that makes sense. And you know ‘everyone’ (except my Mum…) has made comments like:

“Oh it’s so much better now”

“You should have done this years ago” or

“I love your smile… NOW”

I conformed to a beauty standard of society, and everyone believes it was a good decision (apart from my Mum again). People unknowingly with these comments communicated to me they believe my teeth are beautiful now as they didn’t think they were before.

Bottom line — they liked the idea of a teeth gap, but in reality, they all believe that conforming to a set of beauty ideals were a vast improvement.

Photo by Baylee Gramling on Unsplash

The second example — my housemate has afro hair. During quarantine, she decided to give her hair a break from styling and extensions. When her hair is natural, she receives far fewer compliments about how she looks and less attention from men.

But — When the subject of her hair is discussed with her, people comment about how she should embrace her natural hair, wear it with pride and that she doesn't need extensions! Your most natural self is your most beautiful self people in varying phrases tell her. These comments are what people love to exclaim to her.

Yet, as soon as she wears her extensions again, this is what she hears:

“You look beautiful” (as in she didn’t before)

“I love your hair now” or

“This hair looks so good on you”

Without thinking, they compare her natural hair to what society expects and perceives as beautiful and base their compliments on this — not taking into consideration each for their own merits. The general unspoken consensus is she looks better with hair extensions — but what is publicly said is “I love natural hair”.

How we represent ourselves is like a self-marketing campaign.

There is a dichotomy between what we say when discussing the social movement of body positivity and how we genuinely act. How we represent ourselves is like a self-marketing campaign. We want people and ourselves to believe that we are open-minded individuals that are not vain and self-centred. We want to project that we are embracing of others and their differences and that we reject societal biases. But in reality, we, as in society, aren’t there yet. As much as we think we are.

Model Winnie Harlow

We have token models that go against the grain, take Winnie Harlow with her vitiligo and plus-size models such as Ashley Graham and Kate Wasley that represent body positivity but are they really? Are they there to try and show that society is changing to being non-conformist while still conforming to beauty ideals? Are they ready examples to be able to use when talking about how fashion standards and beauty is evolving? As previously discussed here using stretchmarks as an example, it is a step in the right direction, but can we truly hand on heart say it is a truly sincere step in the right direction?

It is seen to be politically important to deem everyone beautiful and that everyone is in their own way beautiful

Body positivity is embraced in theory, among discussions with friends and family, by businesses and the media but in our hearts, minds and on the streets it’s not really what most of us think and feel. We like the idea of it. We want to believe we embody it, that it is who we are as people, but most of this is just self-marketing and projection.

It is seen to be politically important to deem everyone beautiful and that everyone is in their way beautiful and more importantly can be made beautiful to fit into the aesthetic ideals of society— but we don't try and imagine what our culture and the body positivity movement could be like if we minimize the situation and make beauty matter less.