Has the body positivity movement accomplished anything?

Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: Has the body positivity movement accomplished anything?
Position‹3 of 3: People who misunderstand the body positivity movement undermine their goals
Argument‹2 of 2: Body positivity normalises obesity

Acceptance of different body shapes and sizes should not come with a trade off to health. The normalization of "plus size" is dangerous to the health of many and should not be celebrated.

The argument

The body positivity movement has been advocating acceptance for decades, but should we accept all bodies unconditionally? Many people cannot help the way they look and we should accept them and make them feel included. But this becomes harder to argue when we see the increasing rates of obesity in the world. According to the World Health Organisation, obesity levels since 1975 have tripled worldwide. They calculate that, worldwide in 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults (39% of the population) were overweight. Of these 650 million were obese. All the while, a study researching people's perception of their body weight seem to indicate that from 1997 to 2015 adults in the UK increasingly likely to misjudge their own weight. This led to them being less likely to work on losing weight. COVID-19 has only brought obesity statistics further into the spotlight. The CDC reports that obese patients are more likely to suffer severe symptoms, and are three times as likely to need hospitalisation. Obesity is, in many cases preventable. Encouraging people to accept themselves without encouraging to take better care of themselves, as the body positivity movement sometimes does, seems irresponsible.

Premises

[P1]Obesity is largely preventable and carries serious health risks, as shown by rising global obesity rates and worse COVID-19 outcomes for obese patients. [P2] When people misjudge their weight or accept it unconditionally, they are less likely to take steps to improve their health. [P3] The body positivity movement promotes acceptance of all bodies without consistently encouraging healthier choices, contributing to this misperception. [C] Therefore, the body positivity movement irresponsibly normalises obesity and undermines its own goal of helping people.

Counter-arguments

The body positivity movement is trying to raise awareness of different body types, and giving people with little to no visibility in the media a voice, not encourage a lazy lifestyle. Many activists in the movement are people who have struggled to conform to the stereotypically beautiful body type and want to prove that being healthy does not mean being skinny.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] "Largely preventable" understates the factors individuals do not control: food environment, income, working hours, medication, genetics and endocrine and metabolic conditions. The WHO and CDC figures cited establish prevalence and risk, not that individual acceptance is the operative lever. [Rejecting P2] The step from misperception to inaction is asserted rather than shown, and the opposite mechanism is well documented — weight stigma is associated with avoidance of medical care and with disordered eating, so shame is not reliably a spur to healthier behaviour. [Rejecting P3] The movement's stated object is visibility for body types media rarely represent, not a claim that health is unimportant. Many of its advocates are people who could not meet a narrow beauty standard and argue precisely that being healthy and being thin are different things. Attributing the normalising of obesity to it would require evidence that it changes behaviour, which the argument does not offer.