The Great In-Between: Notes on Body Neutrality
I remember the first time I joined a gym as an adult. I finally got to see the full spectrum of body types from young to old, thin to fat, hairless to hairy. Fat pockets and cellulite in areas I’d never seen before. Stretch marks that stretched across stomachs, arms and thighs. Shy to proud nudity from all walks of life. It was glorious.
As someone who has had a love-hate relationship with her body as a small plus-sized, differently-shaped person, there seems to always be a mountain to climb. The beautiful fat models tell you to be a goddess while diet culture tells you you’re a troll until you lose the weight. Even watching the plus-sized models, my body wasn’t like theirs, and the comparison game began again. Where are my breasts? My larger stomach isn’t proportionate to my ass. And so it goes!
After years of oscillating between “Fuck the haters! I’m a GODDESS!” (Which, frankly I didn’t believe, even if a post-it on my mirror told me I was), to “I am incredibly disgusting!” which started to not feel true either, I decided to investigate a third option: Body Neutrality. The great in-between. The middle way.
Starting from where you are (for me, it was self-loathing for never being thin, shaped wrong, or too masculine, or never sexy, or never being hit on, etc.) to feeling neutral seemed like an achievable goal. I…
