When Dove began its campaign for “Real Beauty” in 2004, the brand received endless praise for finally producing an advertisement showcasing women of different skin colors and sizes. With numerous beauty brands following suit, Dove was heralded as the leader of the body positivity movement in the early 2000s. The body positivity movement has come to gain much traction during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) lockdowns, with individuals trying to come to terms with weight gain due to the decline in physical activity. However, how truly meaningful is this movement? Upon closer inspection, the body positivity movement seems to be rather overrated, profiting off of people’s insecurities without meaningfully addressing the reasons why people feel negatively about their bodies.
When Dove began the “Real Beauty” movement, the brand proposed another meaning for the term “beauty,” encouraging people to view alternative ideals of beauty while conveying the message that individuals are responsible for their own insecurities. In this way, it encouraged one to feel a sort of toxic positivity towards oneself: to always be happy with one’s body no matter the shape, size, or color underhandedly shamed individuals for feeling bad about their bodies in the first place. However, the movement did not quite start off that way.
The campaign initially started out as a small movement that was part of a larger one against discrimination and the diet industry. It focused on this singular point: to love bodies that have been discriminated against and considered unattractive. Now, the movement has lost its essence, capitalized on by corporations and individuals alike as a mere aesthetic that can be adopted by buying a cosmetic product. Indeed, beauty brands that previously caused individuals to feel a certain way about themselves have shifted their message to protect their bottom line. These brands have come to sell the message that how individuals perceive and talk about themselves should change, while ignoring the pervasive factors that cause individuals to feel insecure about themselves.
They seemingly attempted to resolve these insecurities by encouraging a shift in mindset through what appeared to be groundbreaking images at the time of cellulite and stretch marks. What brands and individuals need to discuss, however, is how having a nonconforming body – for example, overweight, nonwhite, trans, or disabled – affects an individual’s life and how that, in turn, affects their self-esteem and self-perception. They need to address why marginalized individuals might dislike their bodies. Indeed, individuals do not inherently feel one way or another about their weight or skin color.
Consider overweight individuals: their health concerns are often disregarded due to their weight. In addition, in the United States (U.S.), black individuals are five times more likely to be incarcerated than their white counterparts. Transgender individuals suffer the highest rates of violence today. Inhabiting a certain body renders one more vulnerable to violence and abuse. Understandably then, it is no mystery why those same marginalized individuals do not have high self-esteem regarding their appearance.
Body positivity today forces noncompliant bodies to alter their self-perceptions without questioning the structural inequalities that shape these perceptions, which have in turn been abused by brands. This is why body neutrality is a more favorable alternative to body positivity. By embracing a neutral attitude towards one’s body, one is not expected to feel love or a certain emotion towards it. Instead, the body can be accepted and appreciated as a vessel that quite literally gets one through life. While individuals are not always going to love their bodies, they can still appreciate them for the inordinate number of tasks they help accomplish within a given day.