If you spend any time on social media, you have likely scrolled past thousands of posts tagged with #BodyPositivity. Over the last decade, the phrase has become ubiquitous, slapped onto everything from diet yogurts to fast-fashion ad campaigns.
On the surface, the message seems empowering: love your body, embrace your flaws, and feel beautiful exactly as you are. But as a weight-inclusive healthcare provider [1], I find myself increasingly frustrated with the mainstream body positivity movement [2].
While the intention to foster self-love is valid (I mean, why wouldn’t it be?), the current iteration of body positivity falls profoundly short of creating actual, systemic change. It places the burden on the individual to “feel good” in a society that may be actively discriminating against them.
It’s time we shift our focus, our language, and our advocacy away from the commercialized realm of body positivity and toward a much more urgent and necessary goal: body liberation.
The limits of body positivity
To understand why we need a shift, we need to look at what mainstream body positivity has become. Originally, the movement was birthed from the radical fat acceptance movement of the 1960s [3], led primarily by fat, Black, and queer activists who were fighting for basic human rights, access to employment, and freedom from medical discrimination.
Today, that radical history has been largely co-opted [4]. The dominant image of “body positivity” is often a conventionally attractive, thin, white, able-bodied person proudly showing off a tiny stomach roll or a patch of cellulite. While everyone deserves to make peace with their body, this watered-down version of the movement centers the conversation on feeling beautiful.
But what happens on the days you don’t feel beautiful? What happens when loving your body feels impossible? More importantly, what good is feeling beautiful if you are still denied a job because of your size, or if you can’t fit into a seat on an airplane? Body positivity tells us to change our mindset. Body liberation tells us to change the world.
What is body liberation?
Body liberation is the radical concept* that every person deserves to live in their body without fear of discrimination, marginalization, or oppression, regardless of whether they “love” their body or not. It’s the understanding that our worth is NOT connected to our physical appearance, our size, our health status, or our physical abilities.
*This concept shouldn’t be radical, IMO.
Crucially, body liberation is inherently tied to intersectionality. We can’t meaningfully dismantle fatphobia without understanding how it intersects with other systems of oppression.
The hierarchy of bodies in our culture was not created in a vacuum. As scholars such as Sabrina Strings [5] have documented, the historical roots of fatphobia are deeply entwined with anti-Black racism and the transatlantic slave trade. The idealization of thinness was constructed, in part, to differentiate white, European bodies from Black bodies.
Therefore, advocating for body liberation means we must also be anti-racist. It means we must challenge ableism and advocate for accessibility [6]. It means fighting against transphobia and the policing of gender-nonconforming bodies.
Intersectionality teaches us that none of us are free until all of us are free. True body liberation recognizes that fighting for the most marginalized bodies lifts up everyone.
Tackling medical fatphobia in healthcare
Nowhere is the need for systemic body liberation more evident than in healthcare settings. I hear devastating stories almost every week from clients who have been traumatized in ways big or small by medical fatphobia.
Weight bias in medicine is a pervasive, systemic issue that costs lives. It’s the reality of walking into a doctor’s office with strep throat or a sprained ankle and being lectured about your weight before the doctor even looks at your throat or your joint. It’s the anxiety of being weighed at every single appointment, regardless of whether your weight is clinically relevant to the visit. It’s the use of the outdated, racist, and scientifically flawed body mass index (BMI) [7] to deny patients necessary surgeries, fertility treatments, or life-saving care.
When healthcare providers look at a fat patient and immediately prescribe weight loss, they’re often delaying necessary diagnostics for underlying conditions. This medical negligence leads to worse health outcomes for fat individuals — not because of their body size, but because of the chronic stress of weight stigma and the systemic denial of adequate, evidence-based care.
Body liberation in healthcare means dismantling the weight-normative paradigm. It requires moving toward a weight-inclusive, Health at Every Size (HAES) framework [8], where providers focus on holistic, weight-neutral markers of health and treat the actual human being sitting in front of them with dignity and respect.
Beauty standards as political control
To fully step into body liberation, we must recognize that beauty standards and the thin ideal are not just aesthetic preferences; they are mechanisms of political control and systemic exclusion.
Consider how much time, energy, mental space, and money we spend trying to shrink ourselves, tone our bodies, and fight the natural aging process. Diet culture [9] — together with its kissing cousins wellness culture and anti-aging culture [10] — is a multi-billion-dollar industry built entirely on our manufactured insecurities.
When we are exhausted, hungry, and consumed by counting calories or tracking macros, we have less energy to dedicate to our communities, our passions, and our political power.
A feminist author who I won’t name (because in the last decade-plus she’s, sadly, gone full conspiracy theorist), famously wrote in the early 1990s that diets are the most potent political sedatives in women’s history. By keeping people — especially women, femmes, and marginalized folks — distracted by the pursuit of an impossible bodily ideal, the status quo is neatly maintained.
Unattainable beauty standards ensure that only a very specific, privileged demographic holds power, while everyone else exhausts their resources trying to catch up.
The path forward
So, how do we practice body liberation in our daily lives?
It starts with divesting from the systems that profit off our bodily dissatisfaction. It means:
- Stepping away from diet culture [11]: Exploring frameworks like Intuitive Eating [12] to reconnect with your body’s internal cues and reclaim our interoceptive awareness [13].
- Curating your social media: Following a vast diversity of human bodies rather than a monolithic ideal.
But it also requires outward action. It means:
- Setting firm boundaries in healthcare: Declining to be weighed when it isn’t medically necessary.
- Advocating for accessibility: Demanding inclusive seating in public spaces and fighting weight-based discrimination.
These are actions that we ALL need to take, even if we have thin privilege. Remember: none of us are free until all of us are free.
You don’t have to love your body every single day to be worthy of respect, care, and safety. You just have to exist. The shift from body positivity to body liberation is a shift from the mirror to the movement. Let’s stop trying to fix our bodies, and start working together to fix the systems that taught us our bodies were broken in the first place.
Disclaimer: All information provided here is of a general nature and is furnished only for educational purposes. This information is not to be taken as medical or other health advice pertaining to an individual’s specific health or medical condition. You agree that the use of this information is at your own risk.
Hi, I’m Carrie Dennett [1], MPH, RDN, a weight-inclusive registered dietitian, nutrition therapist and body image counselor. I offer compassionate, individualized care for adolescents adults of all ages, shapes, sizes and genders who want to heal from an eating disorder, disordered eating or chronic dieting [14], cultivate an accepting, respectful relationship with their bodies, and gain the freedom to live an authentic, meaningful life without obsessing about food.
Need 1-on-1 help for your nutrition, eating, or body image concerns? Find out how to get started [15]. I’m in-network with Regence BCBS, FirstChoice Health, Providence of Oregon Health Plan and United Healthcare, and can bill Blue Cross and/or Blue Shield insurances in many states. If I don’t take your insurance, I can help you seek reimbursement on your own. To learn more, explore my insurance and services areas page [16].