The Hypocrisy of Body Positivity; My Late Girlfriend, Anorexia and the Reality of "Thin Privilege"

Two things occurred last night.

1. I had an epiphany.
2. I learned how to spell "epiphany".

Neither of those things has anything to do with this post. I just wanted to point them out.

I went back and forth a number of times, trying to decide which approach to take:

• The easy way of being funny, laughing at fat people and moving on.
• Something that's actually constructive.

The former being what would no doubt turn out more popular because I'm just a fucking hoot, and the latter being the more quotidian and prosaic (I use "mundane" way too much and I'm trying to actually evolve as a human being here, cut me some slack) approach.

The latter option is also the more challenging one, and it actually takes some brain power to produce, so let's go with that. Self-improvement is all the rage right now anyway.

By the way, I'd say about this line right here is the part of the post where 99% stop reading.

If you're still plowing through, however, let's go. Or something?

Body positivity. Eating disorders. Girly stuff. How unexpected.

Reading articles and watching YouTube videos about "body positivity" and whatnot is this weird and undoubtedly unhealthy hobby of mine, even though none of it concerns me in the slightest.

Mostly due to the fact that I had the privilege (word use intentional) of spending four years of my life dating a certain person who lived very close to the issue, in the trenches. I saw her experiencing what it can be to really be, just to say it flat out, extremely thin and pretty.

The fact of it being that if you happen to be what everybody aspires to be - especially if you're a woman - that comes with an immense amount of bullying, ostracizing, isolation, all that good stuff. But, unlike when you're "less perfect", you're never allowed to be hurt, or sad, or lonely, or experience any sort of negative feelings, because, hey, you won the jackpot: you're beautiful. Now, shut up and stop making the rest of us feel bad.

But let's get this out of the way first.

What the Body Positivity movement represents on the surface is a good thing.

On the surface.

There's really nothing constructive or in any way productive about talking shit about fat people. No one likes to admit it, but the fact that it's so prevalent is simply because we all need those lower than us in the social hierarchy to make fun of.

Just so that we, for just a small split-second, can escape the fact that we ourselves have thousands worth of credit card debt, a shitty job or no job at all, a childish inability to hold a meaningful adult relationship, and whatever the fuck else. We all have our things. We can escape that by targeting those even worse off than we are, and fat people are an easy target because no matter how big of a loser you are, hey, at least you're not fat.

If you deny this, you're either lying or naive.

So, I can understand why such a movement came to be. I can even, to a degree, sympathize with it. It's not like downright bullying for no good cause is something that we should celebrate. We will because that's how we are as a species, but that doesn't make it mature.

However, having said that.

What the movement is all about is something else entirely. I'm not even convinced that the so-called "good intentions" were there even at the beginning, but they sure as hell aren't there anymore.

I'm not even going to waste my time with things like wrecking scales and mirrors with hammers and all that stuff that people are now being encouraged to do. That's ridiculous, and this post isn't made for those people because I humbly lack the faith in my ability to reach out to people like that in any meaningful way during my lifetime anyway.

There's a much less talked about thing that comes along with the Body Positivity movement, and that's what I decided to focus on.

The idea of thin privilege, in and of itself. But not just whether or not such a thing exists, but the ramifications of its existence being a widespread belief.

Do thin people have it easier? When it comes to getting romantic attention, of course. And whether we want to admit it or not, most of everything we do has to do with our desire for romantic attention, and I'm sure that's a major factor that skews people's perspectives.

We assume that if and when someone has it easy in the romance department, everything else in their lives must be perfect, as well.

The idea that someone has it easy is very dangerous because it then allows for one to dehumanize those who they think get an unfair advantage. The average person holds certain moral beliefs and behavioral codes - for the lack of a better term right now - regarding how they treat other people. But dehumanizing someone makes it so those rules no longer apply.

Suddenly, you realize life is rigged, others have it easier, so, naturally, you need to get back at them somehow.

And no one bats an eyelid when it's one of the "lucky people" getting bullied because we're trained to think that they somehow deserve it.

It's only when people kick those who are already down that society collectively starts to care about the issue.

Of course it's easier to sympathize when someone who's already down on his or her luck is being given additional kicks to the head, but that fact tends to hide away an entirely different form of kicking that occurs behind the scenes, so to speak. Away from attention.

There's a lot of talk these days about how we perceive people with certain flaws, which are usually superficial. There are campaigns where people are taught to have better attitudes towards these people - but all the while, the attitudes towards the other side of the spectrum has the freedom to grow more and more negative.

I try very hard not to use my late girlfriend as some sort of a tool to drive home a point on some fucking worthless internet blog, but this topic has too much to do with her that I feel I need to bring her up.

My interest in the subject stems entirely from her. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't even care.

Right off the bat, I'll admit that because she was so beautiful and so superficially perfect, it did catch me by surprise that she was actually a caring human being. She would not have had hurt a fly had her life depended on it, and that's not even an exaggeration. I could write a full book consisting of nothing but the things that I loved about her, and right there at the top of the list would be her genuine, earnest and truthful, almost inhuman, care for others.

But yeah, my perceptions had been skewed by the fact that, at least subconsciously, I found it hard at first to see someone who was so beautiful that I was almost afraid to touch out of fear of somehow breaking her, would also be both a good human being, but also a human being with issues, problems, insecurities, fears, doubts, what have you.

However, she did. In spades.

She was always positive on the surface. Without knowing her well enough, you never, ever, ever would have guessed that was anything wrong with her, ever. All smiles all the time, all warmth, all laughter - even at my stupid jokes, which is saying something - but at the same time, she was probably the most broken human being I've ever met.

She had close friends, she had two sisters, she had people around her all the time that she could have opened up to, but she never did. It took a year for her to open up to me about anything.

Why?

Because she didn't know she had any right to.

She was "privileged" in the sense that she was from a wealthy family with a rich daddy, she was pretty, she was thin, she made a living doing modeling, she had a life a lot of people would kill for.

And even though it may sound very strange to a lot of people, she really didn't know that it was within her rights to ever complain about anything.

I'll always remember the first time she halfway accidentally admitted that something someone had said to her at a nightclub really bothered her. Immediately, she almost apologized, in a way that seemed like a reflex of sorts, to which I said what the hell, there's no need to apologize. And good God, the legitimate, sincere surprise when she realized that I won't tell her to shut the fuck up and that she's just a spoiled princess looking for sympathy points.

Her not having a right to complain was a thing she honestly believed in. It had been instilled in her since an early age that she's lucky, a lot of other people are less fortunate, so she should never say a word. She doesn't have the right to let anything get to her, ever.

What this has to do with Body Positivity is, among other things, the fact that a lot of the people who went to great lengths at insulting her, were some of the same people who preached Body Positivity, beautiful at any size.

Blah, blah.

Somehow, the notion of "beautiful at every size" never stopped these people from making statements like:

"You should eat something, maybe you'd grow boobs one day."
"Do you think you're better than us just because you're anorexic?"
"Oh, your birthday is coming up? Eat some cake, maybe some of it will go to your butt and you'll finally get one."
"Do your bones hurt your boyfriend during sex?"

All of this had an effect on her.

The great irony here is that the Body Positivity movement has so much to do with crushing these "patriarchal" beauty standards, one of the most visible ones being thinness.

All that goes out the window very easily when these people notice an opening that allows them to be the ones to press someone else down.

Suddenly, they're like sharks who smell blood when they get an opportunity to call someone breastless, for example.

Despite the fact that having breasts of a certain size, or an ass of a certain size or shape, is very much a part of these "patriarchal" beauty standards that these people so vehemently fight against.

Because now they have the upper hand; they have something the evil thin person doesn't have, and they get to be the ones who represent female beauty in a more efficient manner - if there is such a thing.

So, the whole thing is absolutely hypocritical.

And people shit talk all the time, it's normal, but the obvious double standard here is that if someone calls another person anorexic, it's never a big deal.

Gossip magazines can call a celebrity "anorexic" in their headlines, and no one cares because the person being attacked is thin, and we also view anorexia as a choice.

However, if an obese person is being called out for his or her obvious eating disorder - eating too much is also an eating disorder, let's not forget that - the whole society seems to collapse.

Now we need support campaigns, social movements, marches, you name it.

How many of these people would have a given a damn fuck about my girlfriend who was being stepped on for the fact that her anorexia stunted her breast growth?

Not many.

Oh, she's so pretty, all the guys turn their heads when steps into a room, with or without makeup, what does she have to complain about. She must evil anyway. Quickly, let's do something to make her feel worse about herself. Oh, I know. Let's make fun of her boobs and ass.

Because that's Body Positivity.

By no means was she some uppity bitch who deserved it. Her only crime was the fact that she happened to be gorgeous. And, worse yet, thin.

It's ridiculous that anorexia is so okay to be made fun of, but being obese is never your own fault, and you should not give into society's oppression to become thin. Have some cake, you go, girl!

Imagine if an anorexic person was being pressured to actually love, enjoy and continue on with her eating or disorder. Imagine how damn disgusting that would be.

There are certain small movements, such as Thinspiration and whatnot, that do glorify anorexia, but these are generally frowned upon - and for good reason.

The Body Positivity movement is, in fact, glorifying an unhealthy and deadly eating disorder. It's encouraging people with a life-threatening problem to not seek ways to achieve a healthier life and a healthier body, but instead to keep indulging in their disorder that will eventually kill them.

This is not okay. It's not responsible, and in fact, I find it morally reprehensible.

My girlfriend had a myriad of health problems caused by the fact that due to her eating disorder, a psychological problem, making it so that she would simply be unable to eat more than an apple a day for extended periods of time.

There was not a force in the universe that could shove that food down her mouth if she had decided on a daily calory intake.

She would go to the gym, jog, exercise to an unhealthy degree - not because she needed to be, but because she just couldn't achieve a peace of mind otherwise.

There were times when I held her hair when she threw up, feeling terrible over the fact that someone was so unable to be at peace with herself without going through something like that.

It's absolutely not pretty. I don't wish that on anybody.

If society were to glorify the absolute atrocity that is anorexia, or bulimia, I would be the first one to make noise against it.

At the same time, we're being told to be okay with people killing themselves with too much food. And not just being okay with it, we're being told to normalize it.

As if it's completely normal to just destroy yourself by eating. There's nothing wrong with getting cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, cancer, and eventually death.

Smoking is frowned upon. Drinking too much is frowned upon. Doing drugs is frowned upon. It's okay to make note when someone is doing themselves harm like this.

But obesity has been placed on this weird pedestal where it's just not okay to criticize it.

All the while it's totally acceptable to call someone an anorexic and ask her whether her bones hurt her boyfriend during sex.

The whole movement is full of this type of hypocrisy, double standards, and overall bullshit that it makes it hard for me to see any redeeming qualities in it.

It all goes back to what I said above: we all need people to look down on. People to push and keep down in order to feel better about ourselves. These people may claim to be "body positive", but as soon as there's an opportunity to attack someone else for their flaws, they're right there in the frontlines.

And society turns a blind eye to this because the way things work in 2018 is through victimhood currency.

The thing'n'pretty thang just ain't what's hot in the market nowadays, so that won't earn the sufficient amount of victimhood currency required for society to really give a flying fuck about you.

There's not going to be a Women's March held for you. And you're probably going to be told to shut up.

So, I guess I'm glad I said something.