More Than A Body: Your Body Is an Instrument, Not an Ornament

by Lexie Kite

capitalizing on a feel-good social justice trend as a marketing strategy to sell whatever sponsored product is tagged in the photo, or to increase engagement for their next #ad?

What originated as a feminist and political tool to push against oppressive ideals and stigmatization of marginalized people in the form of fat acceptance has largely become a watered-down version of body politics to push products, not progress. And when body positivity becomes a sales strategy, we have to look at what is being sold. Who is the consumer and what is being consumed?

Body positivity has been appropriated as another way to turn women into consumers and women’s bodies into the objects being consumed, only this time a wider variety of bodies qualify for consumption. This isn’t a matter of serving the greater good; it’s simply a matter of selling goods. If it didn’t sell more goods and gain more views and more likes, then the sellers and influencers would find a new strategy. But it sells. Because women eagerly consume other women’s bodies in media in an attempt to validate their own worthiness to be consumed.

Objectification hurts us. It minimizes us, it distracts us, it drains us. It always has. Only now, under the guise of commodified #bopo, we’ve been duped into thinking our body-centric system of value is also our path to empowerment.

But self-care that is truly caring takes care of your whole self, not just your visible self. Self-objectification is not self-care.

In a culture that values women for their bodies more than anything else, we learn to seek our self-worth through our bodies.

When your empowerment is based on others’ physical appraisal of you, it can be taken away as freely as it was given.

Lasting, meaningful empowerment doesn’t come from believing that your body looks acceptable or even having your body be accepted by others.

When a woman is empowered, she is in control of her own sense of self rather than having it defined or determined by others. Her self-worth won’t falter when someone tells her it should. Our profit-driven culture convinces us that our bodies are where our ultimate power lies, but this is a lie. We all fail in a system that values only our bodies at the expense of our humanity.

More Than a Body. There, we understand that positive body image isn’t

believing your body looks good, it is knowing your body is good, regardless of how it looks. This destination is reachable, and reaching it is transformative.

We must fight body shame, but we need to fight it at its source: the idea that the appearance of our bodies is the most important thing about us. When we try to alleviate shame around certain body types, we’re only fighting a symptom of the problem, not the cause. The problem is the fact that women’s *bodies* are valued more than women themselves, not the fact that only *certain women’s* bodies are being valued.

Body neutrality is the next generation of body image progress—a state of accepting and respecting your body as it is, prioritizing how you feel and what you do, rather than how you look.

This shift is connecting you with the privilege of living in and through your own body, rather than privileging anyone else’s perspective of you. Your empowerment can no longer be handed out to you by validating comments, attention, and engagement and stolen away when the attention wanes. Your empowerment is self-determined, emanating from inside of you, and can never be taken from you.

Achieving peace with our bodies through positive body image is the final frontier for too many women—the last and most stubborn barrier to our own confidence, fulfillment, power, and self-actualization.

You know her. She is your whole, complex, dynamic, human self, right where she has always been since your identity split and you learned to feel at home in the waters of objectification through your own self-objectification. She is your inner child from the memories and pictures you love from your past, all grown up. The same body you were born in and grew up in and experienced every second of life in. All the bad, all the good, all the pain and joy and highs and lows. She puts her arm around you, welcoming you home to yourself after your long venture to see more and be more. You sit with the sure knowledge that your body is good, and you deeply understand that your body is only a fraction of your identity. You have learned so much about yourself in the sea, which makes this reunion all the more powerful. You are home, grounded in the truth that your experiences and pain and responses make you more of who the world needs you to be, not less. You are no longer doubled as the seer and the seen, the consumer and the consumed, the human being and the human being looked at.

To be “more than a body” is to be whole, to be at one with who you are and always were. It

You will no longer blame your body for what you’ve experienced or the expectations it hasn’t met.

Use your body, regardless of how it appears, as an instrument for your own experience and benefit.

Now is the time to recognize and exercise your power to be an example to others—loudly or quietly—of a woman who shows up and lives and loves regardless of whether she fits anyone else’s ideals. The world needs women, and not just pretty visions of women hoping one day we’ll qualify to be heard, to be seen, to lead.

I am more than a body, and my life did not have to wait until my body caught up with my warped twenty-something ideals before I could be who I always wanted to be.

We think our “now” bodies are temporary impostors and our “future” bodies are who we really are, when we’ll really be complete.

You can’t heal the rift in your identity and reunite with your whole self if you are imagining a future self that isn’t even real.

The reality is, we will all face repercussions from being objectified whether or not we choose to participate and buy into those ideals.

the unrealistic nature of those ideals and the very real nature of our aging, changing human bodies renders the currency of beauty of little value for any lasting period. It can be taken away as freely as it was given.

It is important for each of us to get comfortable with letting ourselves down when it comes to our body ideals.

No amount of validation, cultural approval, attention, online engagement, or personal good feelings is worth the collective disadvantage you perpetuate by uncritically accepting the objectifying conditions you’re surrounded by. Every time we share something on social media about the harms of posting and viewing before-and-after weight-loss photos or complimenting people on their weight loss without knowing how or why it happened (among other topics that point out how objectifying ideals hold us back from actual health and happiness), we are hit with a barrage of people telling us to stop being jealous of women’s progress and to just let people celebrate their “wins.” We want people to understand that the harms of valuing and devaluing people based on their bodies still exist whether you personally feel the negative consequences or not. If we don’t want beauty and body judgment to break us down, then we can’t let it build us up either.

What we want people to understand is that when you accept or perpetuate objectifying ideals—because you personally benefit from the validation or you don’t see the harm—you are simultaneously the oppressor and the oppressed. You are upholding an objectifying system that divides you against yourself as you slip outside of your body to evaluate it, and it also pushes everyone in your influence to divide against themselves, as you invite people to measure their value or their health by their appearance too.

That same system keeps women at a disadvantage because we are judged and valued for our appearance more than men are, and held to even narrower ideals of thinness, youthfulness, and flawlessness that will always be just out of reach or at risk of slipping away. When you publicly or privately applaud people’s bodies for getting closer to aspirational ideals, you keep yourself and other people content with their divided, disempowered r...

Our body image is an inseparable part of us that makes us stronger and more whole, not distressed and divided. The painful experiences and feelings you had at sea as you searched for fulfillment and belonging have made you more capable of discerning the difference between faux empowerment that hinges on others’ reactions to your body and unwavering personal strength that grows from inside you. As

Together, we are creating a new, more habitable and joyful environment for ourselves and everyone else—one where we have the freedom and security that come from not just believing that our bodies look good, but knowing that our bodies are good, regardless of how they look.