“I’m a Little Bummed That Adele Lost Weight,” writes Shannon Palus, senior editor for Slate. I gotta say, I think this headline perfectly encompasses what the body positivity movement has unfortunately become.
Body positivity is a widely recognized social movement focusing on the affirmation of all body types regardless of size and/or shape. At first glance, this crusade seemed to be just what this world needed: a judgment-free, unconditional approval of fat people. However, delving deeper into this issue, it is apparent that this newfound glamorization of obesity dangerously ignores its serious and often life-threatening consequential health complications. For example, obesity increases the likelihood of heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes, and cancers, to name a few.
The goods news is that the early waves of this campaign inspired an more accepting view of women’s varying body types. While movie star Marilyn Monroe helped kick-start the body positivity movement in the ’50s by embracing her curves with confidence, Kim Kardashian and Simone Biles have kept it alive. However, the body positivity line has crossed from fit and voluptuous to pure obesity.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 40% of women in the U.S. are clinically obese. Pretending that this lifestyle is “healthy” merely serves as an excuse for poor behaviors that impede people from becoming or staying healthy. When Cosmopolitan’s February issue featured an obese woman with the headline “This is Healthy!” flashed across the cover, the irony was overwhelming. Had the cover depicted a severely anorexic model with the same headline, we would be outraged. Yet this photo has been celebrated in the name of body positivity. Both photos would depict women living very unhealthy lifestyles, two wings on the same bird.
While I applaud Adele for her impressive weight loss journey and inspiring dedication to living a healthier lifestyle, body positivity activists like Palus come across as bitter and perhaps jealous. Understandably, when an obese person succeeds in an industry traditionally dominated by thin people, supporters of the body positivity movement vicariously feel success as well. And as Palus stated in her article, “That’s why it tends to feel joyous when a talented non-skinny person makes it through the filter,” and “when one of the relatively few fat women celebrities changes [,] it’s OK to feel a little disappointment.”
Sadly, the body positivity movement has digressed into a fat acceptance movement. This group mostly consists of obese people looking to validate each other’s insecurities and unhealthy lifestyles. How about a movement where we support self-improvement and leave it at that? Instead of viewing Adele’s “W” as your “L,” let’s all view it as an “M” for motivation.
Grace Glaser is an honors student at the University of Kansas who aspires to pursue careers in both medicine and journalism.
