JUNE 1st, 2023 | RYAN TYLER

What's Really Behind The Body Positivity Movement

Everywhere we look, we see women promoting and encouraging obesity in other women.

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THIS ARTICLE DO NOT REFLECT THE VIEWS OF ALL POSTCANADIAN CONTRIBUTORS.

The average heterosexual man isn't going to turn down a slightly overweight woman, but we have our limits. There is a small minority of men who prefer morbidly obese body types, but a vast majority of men will draw the line at a certain weight. As much as the mobs and media try to shame us for having these standards, we will probably always have them. Most women know this, which is why so many of them support the body positivity movement.

A majority of those who support “body positivity” are women. There are two factions of them, with two very different motives. On one side, you have women who are overweight. On the other side, you have fit and mostly attractive women. Both want to be regarded as the most beautiful by men.

The overweight women, who can't stay fit, want to create a new breed of men who like them for how they look. The fit and attractive women want to minimize their competition and be the best looking women in the room.

Here's how it works.

The fit and attractive women want to do what feminists have been doing for decades, which is knock down their competition in order to level the playing field. In this case, however, their competition isn't men in the workplace, it's other women in the game of courtship. Depending on where they live, the competition to win the perfect man is fierce and the competitors are exemplary. So, women always need to look their best to win.

They aren't wrong in thinking this way, because most men are shallow. We tend to look at the exterior before paying any attention to what's inside. 

The more beautiful women a man has to choose from, the more bleak it is for an average woman to find true love. Even if she is fit, moderately attractive, and funny, there is probably three other women that are funnier, better looking and more fit. However, her chances of being the most beautiful woman in the room are significantly increased when most of the other women in the room are fat.

If you don't believe me, try complimenting your wife or girlfriend with something like, “Wow, you look gorgeous. You remind me of Adele ten years ago.”

Adele has always been attractive, even ten years ago, but your other half would be offended by the comparison. If she was all in for body positivity and truly believed that women are beautiful in all shapes and sizes, she would be grateful for your compliment. Chances are, you both know that Adele is more attractive now than she was ten years ago—for obvious reasons.

Strangely, most of the women who support the body positivity movement would be horrified by being compared to Hayley Hasselhoff, Precious Lee, Lizzo, or Adele.

That reality, of course, doesn't make any sense. The fact that it doesn't make sense is evidence that women who support body positivity are only doing so for their own reasons. Their cognitive dissonance proves they have ulterior motives. They are either overweight and would rather encourage everyone else to be overweight, or they want to eliminate their competition.

Naturally, that truth never comes out.

Scientific truth dictates that being overweight is unhealthy. This is probably why most men and women find obesity unattractive in the opposite sex. In fact, obesity in women is known to cause fertility issues—which, through evolution, explains the psychology behind men finding obesity unattractive. In men, along with causing infertility, obesity causes diabetes, heart problems and an overall shorter lifespan. For women who are looking for a lifelong protector and provider, this doesn't spell out “happily ever after”.

The reasons for women supporting the body positivity movement are explained by simple psychology and they have little to do with women genuinely wanting other women to feel comfortable and proud in their own bodies.

When it comes to body shaming, women do it more frequently than men. Not only do most women have no problem body shaming men, they do it most frequently to other women. A study from 2016 found that more than half of Twitter's misogynistic tweets against women came from women.

This all acts as evidence to prove that women who support body positivity aren't doing it to support other women, they're doing it to benefit themselves. Furthermore, most of the ideals about the perfect female body were created by other women and gay men.

Runway Models

Most men aren't attracted to the skeletons that walk up and down fashion runways. Just like being overweight, being grossly underweight is a sign of either poor health, or severe mental illness. Men, just like women, don't want to marry someone who is prone to chronic bouts of physical and mental illness.

So, how did these models become depictions of the perfect female body?

First, I'll ask you to name more than one straight male fashion designer. Can you even think of one? If you can't, it's because 99% of fashion designers and editors of fashion magazines are women and gay men. These are the people who have spent the last three or four decades putting skinny women on magazine covers and runways.

Since the 1970s, men and women, both who aren't attracted to women, have been dictating what a perfect woman should look like. Before you jump to Playboy and Penthouse, which were started by straight men, keep in mind that most of the women in these magazines started off fairly curvy. In fact, prior to the 1970s, the most adored women in Hollywood had curves and no thigh gaps.

Just think of Marilyn Monroe.

Obviously, none of the women were ever obese, nor were they excessively skinny. It wasn't until the fashion industry took off that women got skinnier and skinnier. Then, by the late 1990s, feminists started getting loud about the new standards. That's when they started blaming men for the insecurity and pressure women were being forced to deal with.

Prior to the 1960s, there was no real fashion industry. Coincidentally, as runways and fashion magazines began to popularize throughout the 1970s and 80s, depictions of women became more and more skinny. Again, as I mentioned above, who runs most of the fashion industry? Not heterosexual men.

You shouldn't just take my word for any of this, you should read what a plastic surgeon had to say about the evolution of the ideal female body throughout the decades.

At the beginning of the 1900s, the ideal woman had an hour glass shape and an occasional potbelly. By the 1930s and 1940s, the perfect female body was taller, curvier and more solid. It wasn't until the late 60s and early 70s that “society” began to idealize super-skinny women, according to Hagen Schumacher, a leading plastic surgery consultant. Schumacher and others predict that society will become more accepting of “natural beauty” in the 2020s.

Unfortunately, most honest doctors don't consider modern natural beauty, in the form of obesity, to be healthy for anyone.

But, here we are again, having the ideal female body imposed on us by other women and men who aren't attracted to women. The same fashion magazines, run by the same people, are now putting plus-sized models on their covers and on their runways. The same gaggle of women and homosexuals who made being grossly unhealthy desirable for the past 30 years are now trying to make being grossly unhealthy desirable again.

The problem is that it doesn't really work.

Most men will never find a morbidly obese woman attractive, no matter how hard “society” pushes them. Likewise, they'll never find anorexia attractive either. More importantly, real doctors will never encourage their patients to remain overweight and proud of it.

Even more importantly, shaming an average man for not being attracted to unhealthy body types will be worse for women. We're already seeing more young men withdraw from society in unhealthy ways and avoid old fashioned courtship. More and more men are afraid to talk to and approach women, which is not only resulting in more damaged men, but in more lonely women.

Again, don't take my word for it. Look at the statistics.

Overall, the average man doesn't mind thicker thighs and an hour glass figure. We aren't as judgmental as women when we pick our partners. We also don't care as much about breast sizes. It is true that there are some men who do, and they will make you feel like shit sometimes, but the average guy will probably take an average and moderately healthy woman as she is, without much judgment. If a woman is in a relationship with a demeaning and disrespectful asshole, it's not every other man's fault. Her choices are her responsibility. 

The real problems with body shaming and pressure aren't rooted in ordinary men. They're rooted in women. When women see skinny women on magazine covers, they're erroneously assuming that she is what all men want. They're wrongly believing that men buy those magazines, or even publish those magazines. We don't.

Heterosexual men have nothing to do with the fashion industry, or the publications that push certain body types. We let our wives body shame us, insult us and degrade us while laughing it off and accepting them for how they are. 

The fact is, body shaming is more likely to come from women than men.

Body Shaming Fit Women

After Adele lost all her weight, she was attacked by bloggers and outraged mobs on social media. By now, I don't need to tell you which sex made up a majority of that mob. You'd be hard pressed to find a heterosexual man criticizing Adele for losing a lot of weight. Minus a few assholes, you would have been hard pressed to find a man that would have rejected her before she lost weight. 

Adele is joining a growing number of impressively strong women, like JK Rowling, who are doing more to stand up for women than any man. Speaking to Oprah, Adele said, “It's not my job to validate how people feel about their bodies.”

In an interview with Vogue, Adele admitted where most of the criticisms and attacks were coming from. “The most brutal conversations were being had by other women about my body. I was very fucking disappointed with that. That hurt my feelings.”

No kidding. Other women.

Adele isn't alone in her struggles with fit-shaming. A female weightlifter shared her experiences in 2016; various women have shared their experiences with losing weight, only to be shamed for it; and in 2015, a fit mom influencer had to delete an Instagram post in which she posed with her daughter and her six pack, saying, “I have a kid, a six pack and no excuse.” Abby Pell was attacked and accused of fat-shaming, mostly by other women, for posting a picture of her six pack and declaring she had no excuses to be unfit.

Oh, the horror. One female user posted, “This is fat-shaming. Plain and simple.” Another said, “This is so demeaning!”

Only in our ass-backwards clown world would promoting fitness be considered demeaning, while encouraging obesity and heart failure is considered virtuous. There has to be a shortage of other times in human history, aside from the witch hunt, when society went this far off the tracks. Had we been behaving this way for thousands of years, civilization would have never made it this far. If we keep it up, we won't make it much further.

The Truth

Sadly, most women will have quit reading this after the first paragraph. If you've made it this far, congratulations. You might still think of this as an attack on women, but I can assure you it's not. I haven't said anything that I don't perceive as true and I could easily dish out as much negative truth about men. If that truth makes you feel unsettled, I can't help you.

Being obese is unhealthy, just ask any doctor. A majority of men don't really find obese women attractive—and they never will, no matter how much you try to shame them.

Men may be shallow, but they aren't as judgmental as the average woman. As long as your health—or lack thereof—is not excessive in one particular direction, we will almost always take your body as it is. We don't care if your thighs rub together, we don't mind having a stomach roll to grab, or a C-Section scar and some stretch marks to look at.

Chances are, as a woman, you're being harder on yourself than any man ever will be.

The reason you are being hard on yourself has nothing to do with men and everything to do with the faulty perceptions that have been put in your head by other women. Most of it has to do with their basic psychology, which can be explained by jealousy and fear. When a woman shames you for trying to be fit, she is doing it because she isn't fit. If she shames you for wearing a low-cut top, it's because she thinks you look better than she does. If any woman shames you, for any reason, it's because she is insecure, jealous and afraid of competition.