Beachbody BODi is co-opting body positivity. –
it’s far from the only company to do it.
What is Body Positivity?
The concept of body positivity – being accepting and against the marginalization of all bodies – should come to us instinctively. Most of us believe in one of the most basic tenets of human decency: that all people should be treated equally regardless of color, race, gender, religion, etc.
Still, many people just don’t get the memo about the fact that weight and appearance should be a part of that too. This isn’t a new thing: larger bodies have been discriminated against for decades. Body positivity was developed as a social justice movement by black, fat, queer groups and the fat acceptance movement in the 1960s as a way to garner awareness of and end the marginalization of people in all bodies.
Body positivity today focuses mostly on challenging our perception of the typical beauty standard for women (although there is a body positive movement for men) – white, thin, symmetrical, privileged. In other words, that everyone has value, everybody’s body is worthy, even if it’s not conventionally ‘attractive.’
Body positivity wasn’t created as to sell diets or clothes, get ‘likes,’ or attract people to your bikini shots. But social media is full of posts by influencers – RDs included, unfortunately – that are taking body positivity and twisting it to promote themselves.
I highly doubt the people who spearheaded body positivity had conventionally attractive, thin, or muscled girls in bikinis talking about cheat days, or showing their butt in workout gear in mind when they thought up the concept.
The danger of body positivity being taken out of context, is that the marginalized people who it was designed to help, get run over by others who aren’t marginalized at all.
In other words, co-opting body positivity just marginalizes the marginalized…again.
What’s obvious is that body positivity is now being used as a sales pitch – most recently by the MLM Beachbody.
Beachbody BODi and body positivity
Beachbody BODi is the new name for Beachbody, and the company is now…
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