A truly awesome post from Molly Tanzer, managing editor at Lightspeed and all-around rad person, about body shaming and why it’s stupid. Not just the obvious stuff, but some of the subtler stuff, too, stuff people may think is actually celebrating certain body types, but really isn’t helping the situation at all.
… I do believe 100% in body-positivity… It’s healthy to love yourself, natch, whatever you look like. … there is the stone-cold fact that you can’t know anything about a person’s health just by looking at him or her.
So yeah. She talks about the fat-positive movement which I haven’t really read much about, so I can’t speak to that, but anything which says “treat your body well to the best of your ability and love what it looks like” is something I can get behind. And “treat your body well” isn’t a one-size-fits-all prescription, either. For some people it means watching sodium. For some people it means watching sugar. For some people it’s rigorous exercise. For some people — like me — it’s trying to strengthen your asthmatic lungs through a slow buildup of cardio. Just do what you can to be healthy, whatever that means for you, and love your body the way it looks.
For further reading on this kind of mentality with health and nutrition, I recommend Fat Nutritionist. I like what she has to say.