What's the deal with... BODY NEUTRALITY?

By now we’ve all heard of the term “Body Positivity” and consequently thought “Must be nice”, right? While it would be ideal to feel empowered and positive about oneself, sometimes that idea feels far from achievable. Body Neutrality is the concept of acknowledging our bodies for what they are and how they function for us as opposed to what they look like or how much we love them. For one reason or another many of us find ourselves holding onto standards that dictate how our body should look and how we should feel about our bodies. Really- who decides how we SHOULD be other than ourselves?! It can be so difficult to unlearn what has been taught to us by our culture, media, and even family and friends but it IS possible!

Focusing on only feeling good about ourselves can lead to a habit of toxic positivity- where we find ourselves in an endless cycle of shame for not being able to achieve the confidence that we are told will make us happy. This is the opposite of what we are all working towards! It can be so relieving to consider that we maybe don’t have to love our bodies but instead learn to respect or simply acknowledge them instead. Our body is something that fluxes and changes for a variety of reasons such as illness, life transitions, celebrations, and our environment. As we change throughout our life, so do our bodies, and being dependent on feeling happy about it all the time simply isn’t susta