Encyclopedia of Opinion
Question
Has the body positivity movement accomplished anything?
Position1 of 3
Yes, the body positivity movement has had positive impact in the world
Argument1 of 3

Body positivity disincentivizes dangerous eating disorders and weight-loss initiatives

When society upholds dangerous standards of body types, people of all genders feel pressured to conform to them - even to the extent that they will develop an eating disorder or take dangerous weight-loss medications.

The argument

When society upholds dangerous standards of beauty, such as the potentially unattainable Kardashian-type body (skinny and curvy, somehow at the same time) this can push people to dangerous means to conform to societal pressures and achieve this body. Some means can include eating disorders to lose weight, weight loss pills and teas that increase the metabolism at the risk of a heart attack, fad diets that are not scientifically backed, and potentially excessive plastic surgery. When people love their own bodies and are encouraged by popular culture to do so, this removes the incentive for people to go to exaggerated means to create their desired body for themselves.

Premises

[P1]Dangerous beauty standards push people toward harmful means like eating disorders, risky weight-loss products, fad diets, and excessive plastic surgery. [P2] The body positivity movement encourages people to love their own bodies and rejects these narrow standards. [P3] When people accept their bodies, the incentive to pursue these harmful methods diminishes. [C] Therefore, the body positivity movement has had positive impact by disincentivizing dangerous eating disorders and weight-loss behaviors.

Counter-arguments

Instead of being an inclusive movement for all body types, body positivity has lead to a "reverse ideal body type" where being skinny is now shameful. This has caused an equally harmful movement where people strive to have the body types idealized by body positivity, sometimes to the extent where it costs them their own health or well-being.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The causal claim is broader than the evidence. Eating disorders are substantially heritable and multi-determined, and treating them as a response to beauty standards misstates the condition — anorexia predates mass media and appears across very different cultures. [Rejecting P2] The movement is not one thing. It spans personal self-acceptance, fat-acceptance activism and commercial marketing that borrows the language while selling the same products, and the premise credits the whole with the aims of its best version. [Rejecting P3] The incentive account does not fit how these behaviours work. Disordered eating is rarely a considered response to an incentive that encouragement could remove, and the counter-pattern is documented: a new ideal has emerged against which thinness itself draws criticism, carrying its own pressures. [Rejecting C] The conclusion asserts an effect no one has measured. Body dissatisfaction and eating-disorder presentations did not fall over the period the movement grew, which is at least in tension with the claim.