The body positivity movement is honest, it's just not needlessly cruel. Obesity is an epidemic caused by our food systems, and body positivity seeks to remove shaming and bullying the individual from our culture. Yes there are actions individuals can take, but those actions are much easier to take the more resources, money, and time you have.

I listened to a great podcast recently that discussed this: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0hIhaRvji14Xk7xltlfzDl?si=W7Lm9F9ERH2jM_LqdNHleA

Here's the most relevant part of the transcript. It's a bit weird to read, it's really better as a podcast so I do recommend listening

... an amazing woman named Shelly Bovee. She's basically the person who introduced body positivity into Britain. So she grew up in a working class town in Wales where she was, she describes herself the only fat girl in her school. And one day when she was 11 her teacher said to her, Bovee stay behind after class. So she stayed behind thinking what have I done wrong? And the teacher said to her, you're much too fat, it's disgusting, go see the school nurse, she'll sort you out. So kind of shaken Shelly went to see the school nurse. The school nurse said, why are you here? She said, well the teachers are too fat. She said, take off your clothes, I'm going to inspect you. She took off her clothes and the school nurse said, this is disgusting. You're a greedy pig. Stop eating so much. Just berated her. So Shelly left and her whole life she was soaking up abuse and insults. and it made her hate herself and hate her body. In fact she told me she hadn't ever looked at her body when she was showering even. She'd never looked at her body naked because she hated it so much.

And then she learned about the body positivity movement which had obviously begun in the US, that was saying this is just a form of bigotry and bullying and cruelty and we don't have to take this shit. As Shelley introduced it to Britain Wright I heard of her for the first time. I remember seeing her on TV when I was 10 years old when she was presented as kind of laughable madwoman and she really pioneered opposing stigma and she remains proud to this day of the work she did, rightly so in my view.

But Shelley also faced another problem. She was extremely obese and she was finding it hard to walk. In fact she was in a wheelchair a lot of the time and a doctor told her she had heart problems. And she really began to wrestle with well am I betraying my body positivity if I talk about the harm caused by obesity to my health? And she began to say well what kind of body positivity would it be that would judge me for keeping my body alive? That doesn't seem like body positivity to me. She lost an enormous amount of weight through calorie restriction and exercise and became much healthier.

And she stands by everything she said about stigma but she said it's not either or. It's not either you're against stigma or you're in favor of reducing obesity where possible. It's both and. If you love someone who's obese you want to protect them from cruelty, shaming and bullying.And if possible you want to protect them from diabetes, heart disease, dementia. So to me there's no playoff between those two