Why are you so freaking body-positive, or Sunset plastic beauty
'21.08.2017'
Source: Intueat
Not so long ago, the beauty editor of Lady Mail.Ru, Marina Syutaeva, wrote an article “Why I believe that body-positive is a lie”. In the material she expressed her point of view on this topic:
“Your favorite bodipositive is a lie. Like all these loud phrases: "I love my body like this," "I will not give in to fashion for weight loss," "Proper nutrition is a global conspiracy." Anyone who would object to me, either do not have the willpower to take hold of their figure, or they are thin. Get better at least up to 80 kg, then we'll talk. ”
The article angered those who have a different point of view, who are in favor of body-positive, in particular, Svetlana Bronnikova, writes Intueat.
Svetlana is a clinical psychologist, candidate of psychological sciences, and a certified specialist in intuitive nutrition. The woman decided to answer Marina Syutaeva in an open letter of appeal.
Recall the bodipositive motion aimed at adopting its own body and the destruction of negative stereotypes of society in relation to people whose appearance is different from the generally accepted standard.
“You naively believe that body positivity unites the“ fat and weak-willed ”. This is not true - body positive unites the living, ”said Bronnikova.
A psychologist learned about an article by Syutaeva from one of the participants in a closed group for supporters of intuitive power. The woman posted a link with the comment: "Awful article."
“It is understandable - August, there are few readers, the ratings are falling. Editors are on vacation, content is scarce To revive you need a scandal, you see, readers will start writing angry letters - here's your content. And there is no more scandalous topic than a woman's right to weigh as much as Mother Nature has given her, right? ”, Writes Bronnikova.
Bronnikova expressed her opinion on why Marina Syutaeva was wrong, in a letter.
“I am an ordinary woman, not thin and without willpower. Until almost thirty, I, like many women from the post-Soviet space, considered beauty to be the result of hard work on myself. At the age of 28, I went to work in Europe and very quickly discovered that women here do not care much about meeting certain beauty standards. So I joined the body positive movement. It helped me live the next 16 years, having two children and never going on a diet either before or after childbirth. Living here, I learned to respect, appreciate and love my body, not for how much it weighs, but for what it can. I learned to carefully filter the promises of glamorous magazines, wear what I personally like and feel comfortable, and keep in mind those who rate me on how I look. And for many years I have been teaching this to other women, ”explained the psychologist.
“This letter is an appeal not only to Marina Syutaeva, but also to all those who are not only annoyed by the body-positive movement, but scared to the point of hysteria,” she added.
Here is the full text of the letter of appeal of Svetlana Bronnikova:
Good afternoon, Marina! I confess, after reading the article, I first got angry. I am always angry when strangers claim that they know what is going on in my head, and also accuse of lying. Such an accusation is the best manipulation, because it immediately makes one make excuses. And the one who justifies himself - looks guilty and unconvincing. Therefore, Marina, I will not make excuses in front of you for confessing body-positive. I suggest it is better to recall the old proverb “What Peter says about Paul speaks more about Peter than about Paul” and find out why you were so “bombed”.
I thought about how so much aggression in the text. What women, like yourself any, infuriated Marina Syutaeva? Here is the answer:
“I myself visited the camp of beginning bodipozitivistov. Three years in a row after giving birth I didn’t just lose weight, but gained weight. I donated extra pounds to 12 ... And I will not rest until I get into jeans from the "past life."
That is why you are so angry with us, Marina. Because we have learned to keep in the past life not only unsuitable jeans, but also past lovers or husbands, past unsuccessful works, past unfaithful friends. We have learned to understand that if a person or thing categorically does not suit you - you need to leave it in the past, rather than adapting yourself to them, breaking and crippling. To say goodbye to the wrong person, to buy a thing of its size increases self-esteem. What a pity that you did not understand this, because it made us much happier.
We have "no will power to take on ourselves."
Here you are right. I'll tell you a secret - we have a little time. We prefer to take on things that are pleasant and interesting: new projects at work, the birth and upbringing of children, damn it, but the penis of a beloved man! “To take on yourself” in the lexicon of your dietary culture means to hate yourself by all means, to shame you by all means, to torture you, through pain and anguish, to acquire ghostly perfection. Marina, you have not played enough in BDSM? On health, but we - pass.
And I think, Marina, you are so angry with us because you are afraid. Yes Yes. We are threatening you. After all, strictly speaking, you have no profession. You are not an architect, not a teacher, not a gynecologist. You do not create anything and do not help anyone. Your job is to convince us every day of the imperfections of our skin, the dullness of hair, the hideousness of stretch marks and shame that our hair does not grow only on the head. All this needs to be immediately corrected, hidden, pulled out, burned out with a laser, fire and napalm. And this can be done only by urgently buying all these beautiful beauty tools and procedures of your sponsors.
You even dare to call it “self-care,” although many of these procedures are more like sadomasochistic experiments. Your job is to convince us that if we do not immediately buy all this and do it, we will not be loved. We will not be happy. Never ever.
And this is the real lie. You are trying to convince us that we need to stop, freeze time. That, having given birth to a child, it is necessary to remain the same as before giving birth. What can avoid old age, and probably even death. You tell us about the non-existent world of perfect plastic people - and, while truly hating yourself and your body, you are convinced that this is the only way for a woman to exist in the modern world. And trying to convince us of this.
Because everything that the dietary, fitness and beauty-industry wants from us is that we continue to hate ourselves. Only a person who is categorically dissatisfied with himself is ready to buy frantically, irrationally, without counting money and without thinking whether he needs it. Each of our emotions has a function of motivation for a particular behavior. Anger causes us to attack, fear - to run. Shame encourages hiding. Being tormented by shame for their disgusting ugliness, women do not buy “care products” and “beauty procedures” - they buy disguise. As eternal Cinderella, wearing a dress and shoes from someone else’s shoulder, women in modern culture are afraid of only one thing - that the clock strikes midnight, and the deformity of their imperfections will become apparent.
It is important for you that, even after carefully disguised, we continue to feel painful shame. For wrinkles, folds, pores, smells. For the fact that we are living, biological, real, and not plastic creatures. And therefore, in the beauty industry, the customer is always wrong.
There is no absolute minimum, the TRP norm, by completing which, you can exhale and be just a little bit pleased with yourself. When stretch marks and cellulite cease to cause shame and suffering, we are told that we have short eyelashes (lengthen!), Narrow eyebrows (build up!), Small breasts or back (to load silicone!), We are generally unbearable, disgusting, ugly in our usual , natural form ...
The era of plastic beauty comes to an end
Marina, I have bad news for you. More and more Hollywood stars choose natural aging. Plus-size models, so frightening you - the news of yesterday. Today, especially in the fashion model age, 60 +. With wrinkles, and, oh, horror! - gray hair.
The anti-diet approach is becoming increasingly popular. After all, if your diets worked, did 2 out of every 3 people on Earth would now suffer from overweight and obesity? Or do five of the seven billion people have problems with willpower?
Fewer women agree to go under the plastic surgeon’s knife to get rid of the shame of their body. I will tell you one more secret: they do not get rid of shame by cutting off a piece of the abdomen or stitching a pair of silicone bags in the chest area. This is the subject of prolonged psychotherapy.
Your "healthy lifestyle."
Do you think body-positive means “promoting unhealthy lifestyles”? And what does propaganda of the so-called “healthy” mean? Diets guaranteed to lead to bouts of overeating and subsequent weight gain (this is the case with everyone, Marina, not just you)?
Exhausting, not corresponding to the physiology of a woman's workout, from which comes amenorrhea, meaning potential infertility, osteoporosis and the transfer of the body of a fertile woman into menopause, that is, aging?
Exhaustion on supposedly “healthy” ration on 1500 calories with falling hair, scaly skin and broken nails?
And after a couple of heroic weeks, healthy lifestyles is a secret party, to which, besides you, only hot dogs and chocolates are invited, culminating in going to the toilet causing vomiting - because the horror of a set of dropped kilograms is stronger than the fear of death from a rupture of the esophagus, quite often with bulimia ??
Thank you, but we make another choice.
We choose freedom is everything we want. All that is necessary for our body, which works for us every day and deserves to receive tasty and varied food. Oh yes, and desserts too.
You will not believe, Marina, but when a person allows himself to eat everything without guilt, the food ceases to resemble an erotic thriller of category B, where the main character is pursued all the time, but in the final she does not have time to escape, and she is raped and killed with an ax. There is nothing narcotic in food, nothing terrible. Food is not dangerous, you have been deceived. Food is a resource, fuel, pleasure, a tool for social communication. And that's all. No suspense. You see, food is just food.
We choose to look the way genetics and evolution conceived us. Some of us are skinny, some are fat, someone is something in between.
Sorry, Marina, but it doesn’t matter to us how hard we push on the ground - the figure on the scales does not provide any other information.
No, we do not wake up at night, dreaming of a thin body - you attribute to us your own insomnia. We sleep well and soundly, at least during periods when we are not breastfeeding. At night, those who are starving while dieting are awake — inadequate nutrition destroys sleep. We know that sleep and sex are our best beauty friends, working much better than your fashionable and expensive “care products”. In order to sleep well and want sex, it is enough to be full and satisfied with yourself. In self-satisfied people there is neither insomnia nor frigidity.
Twiggy and Jolie cause us sympathy, mixed with sympathy. Their thinness does not seem healthy to us.
In the world of ordinary women, the average size is 42-44 European, not Russian. The average Russian woman wears 50-52 clothing size. We are not given much time, and we are not going to dedicate it to the struggle with the best, most faithful friend - our own body. Too little will be left for love, work, games with children, night walks, morning jogs, barbecues with friends at the lake, ridiculous dancing to strange music, work avidly - of which, in our opinion, life should consist. Certainly not from the continuous struggle with the body for the choice between a pie and a salad. You naively believe that bodypositive combines “fatty and weak-willed”. This is not true - body-positive unites the living.
Who are we?
Among us are those to whom you silently and squeamishly refuse to be feminine. After all, you think that such a small bodily change, how to add 12 kilograms after childbirth, means “to become less female” and requires immediate intervention. What then do those of us who are in a wheelchair as a result of a disease or accident forever? Has experienced a bilateral mastectomy? Was born with incurable limp? Lived to 70, or even 80 years? Imagine, such women do not just exist - they wear make-up, beautiful lingerie, play sports and choose jewelry that they will wear today.
You believe that fat and maimed should not exist, that beauty lies in physical perfection. The last time this idea was particularly relevant in Nazi Germany. The ideas of race purity forced thousands of Germans to exercise every day, striving for a strong and slender body - after all, only such were needed to capture world domination. The rest had to die in the gas chambers. Is this the future you want to prepare for us, Marina?
We recognize that all bodies are different and all bodies are beautiful. Among us there are both ordinary, and thin, and sports owners of such a relief that you would envy your jeans from a past life. Any. We are united not by the size of clothes, not waist volume. We are united by the failure to constantly feel the humiliation of the imperfections imposed on us. And we choose not to. We choose to be imperfect and happy. We choose to be alive today - tomorrow may be too late. Want with us? It's simple!
