The most common example of the "love your body" movement is the overweight girl who decides to forget the haters and own their curves. There's a huge problem with this though and it's that there's a difference between being naturally curvy and obese.
The girl on the left is absolutely beautiful and should own her body and not feel pressured to change herself. That's the kind of girl that these campaigns should be geared towards. As far as the girl on the right, if she loves her body and doesn't want to change it, you know what, great for her. But with all of the campaigns saying that you're body's okay the way it is, what about girls and guys who look like that woman on the right and know they're overweight and unhealthy and want to lose weight? Do we congratulate them for trying to lose weight or judge them for not accepting their own bodies and conforming to societies standard of beauty by trying to lose weight? In my opinion, we should be doing the first one. The thing is though, I only think it's admirable for someone to lose weight and become healthier-looking as long as they're not harming their body in the process, like by getting liposuction or taking diet pills or starving themselves.
This post isn't going just going to be about overweight or "overweight" people because realistically there are way more people out there that maybe aren't too happy with the body they have. There are so many guys that don't like how small they are and want to put on more muscle weight - I've seen it so many times among guys I've lifted weights with and my guy friends. How is wanting to look more muscular any different than wanting to look slimmer and healthier? It's not, at least the way I see it. I don't think guys (or girls even) who want more muscle weight should be preached at to, "Love their body the way it is."
I applaud the people who go to the gym or run or do Pilates or whatever to look more toned and athletic. They have way more commitment to staying fit than I do. However, like trying to lose weight, there are ways to do it wrong. To me steroids, liposuction, diet pills, anything that serves as a quick and easy way to get the body you want is cheating to me. You want a different body? Great! Work for it. Plus this:
is waaaaaaaaaaaaay better than this:
Plus, there's nothing sexier, at least to me, than a guy with a nice body who worked his ass off for it.
Back to the Body Love Campaigns. Accept yourself if you're happy with yourself or make a (healthy) change if you're not happy - that's the message I think they should be promoting. However, there are too many pictures like this:
Um, excuse me? As a girl who has almost no curves,
I'm not skinny because I'm trying to look like the models in Cosmopolitan or Vogue. I'm not skinny because I starve myself or throw up my dinner. I'm skinny for the same reason you're curvy. If you're trying to preach natural beauty, respect what's natural for EVERYONE.
I understand wanting to challenge the standard of beauty manufactured by advertisers, fashion magazines and designers. I don't agree with designers choosing sickly-looking models for their runway shows and ads and I DEFINITELY don't agree with Photoshopping models, especially as a photographer myself. The reason I don't agree with Photoshopping though isn't because it promotes a slanted and dangerous idea of what beauty should be - I think that people have a responsibility to look at those Photoshopped models and recognize that that's not what real people look like, especially with the widespread use and accessibility of Photoshop and the massive amount of propaganda against it. I don't think the core problem is the message they're promoting because if people had positive self-esteem and loved themselves, it wouldn't matter what the models in the magazines looked like. If magazines were the only sources of self-esteem damaging images and messages, changing what models in magazines looked like would solve the entire problem, but they're not the only source - because of this, it's people's attitudes about themselves that need to be changed.
The real reason I have an issue with Photoshopping is because it's a misrepresentation of that individual. It's not like photo editors just remove pimples on a bad acne day or erase a scar (although personally I wouldn't 'shop that out either) - they completely alter the shape and appearance of the model's body.
I'm more concerned about the model then the people viewing him or her. Let's take the girl above for example. Usually, we just see the "after" image whereas she sees her own real body and the changes that they felt were necessary to make to it, even when there was nothing wrong to begin with. I'd be offended as hell to see the before and after of myself.
I guess the point of this post is that you should be the one who decides what your body looks like based on what will make you happy, not on what magazines or "body love" campaigns or even people you know say should make you happy. As long as you're happy with yourself, with your authentic self, then that's all that should matter.
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