The Naturale Yogi

I recently watched several videos on the topic of Body Positivity. One of the videos was of one of the original fitness trainers of The Biggest Loser, Jillian Michaels, where she was asked her opinion about celebrating obesity. Anyone who knows her from TV would know that of course she doesn’t think that celebrating obesity is healthy. Another video was talking about the idea of health at every size, which is another area of body positivity. The idea of this movement was that people can be healthy at every size from very thin to very obese. Here is my understanding of the ideas these two phrases are being pushed in the media and what I think it should be instead.

Body Positivity

From the videos I’ve seen I know that people who are body positive would celebrate every body shape there is. They are accepting of the very big but I didn’t see a lot of videos that are specifically talking about the very small. Some videos or people even shame those who were previously obese and lost weight due to wanting to have better health.  The reality is that body positivity is supposed to mean that we accept every person no matter what shape they are and respect them all regardless of body shape or size. Body positivity is not shaming a person for the way they look or the size of their clothes. Body positivity is not telling a person they are fat just because you want to.

I have been a victim of people who are ignorant and have been judged for not being a certain weight or body fat percentage. I was even an athlete and there are times when people still give comments that I should do this or that not knowing that I am in fact an athlete and I know more about the fitness information they were trying to explain. This is what body positivity should be, you just can’t assume and judge people and tell them something negative about themselves because they already know that. I was a very athletic person but because I wasn’t focused on trying to look like a fitness model or because I was a very cardiovascular endurance kind of athlete and I did not lift any weights except my body weight, I did not resemble the stick thin figures that was prevalent during the time when I was an adolescent. This should not have been a problem because in the world where there is true body positivity it wouldn’t have mattered what I looked like. I wouldn’t have been judged based on my appearance and told that I was fat because fat people can dance and chubby people can run marathons. Body positivity is being a genuinely good person to everyone no matter the shape or size.