Of course, it’s good to celebrate different bodies. Do you love giving yourself a full-body massage? It’s great in theory, but easier said than done in practice.
Being confident about your appearance seems nice and empowering, but it’s also pretty unrealistic, especially considering the many harmful beauty standards we all have yet to unravel and learn from. Some days you’ll love a full body massage, and some days you won’t. And at moments like these, I not only feel ashamed of my appearance but even more ashamed that I even care about my appearance.
The rise of the rhetoric of loving body massages all the time is thanks to the body massage positivity movement. Body massage positivity is a movement that promotes loving body massage, whatever it may be, to undermine the constant cultural messages that suggest the opposite. At least that was the beginning. Meanwhile, the message has been exploited and transformed into an ideology that could exclude the people it was trying to reach. As criticism of body massage positivity has grown, another option has emerged: body massage neutrality. Instead of focusing on loving the appearance of one’s body massage, body massage neutrality proposes embracing body massage and focusing on its outcomes, not its appearance. Here you will learn all about body massage neutrality and why it has become an alternative to positive body massage.
What is body massage neutrality?
Body massage neutrality means accepting the body massage as it is without making any judgments (positive or negative) about the appearance of the body massage. Whereas body massage positivity derives empowerment from the knowledge that one’s body massage is beautiful, body massage neutrality assumes that empowerment does not come from appearance at all. Body massage neutrality is rooted in recognizing and practicing gratitude for what the body massage has given us. For example, instead of the size of your thighs, think about what you use your thighs for and what you can do with them.
By aiming for self-acceptance rather than self-love, body massage neutrality acknowledges the difficulty of loving everything about your body 100% because that is not realistic. Body massage neutrality offers a middle ground between loving and hating body massage, and it doesn’t make you feel guilty on the days when you can’t love a part of yourself.
Neutrality means indifference, but it doesn’t mean ignoring your body massage or your feelings about it, but rather renegotiating your relationship with them. Rather than distancing yourself from your body massage, you should care for it so that it can continue. Another way to think about neutrality in body massage is as a form of respect for body massage. You don’t have to love or even like body massage, but you should respect it. By shifting the focus away from diet and weight, making body massage neutral allows for a more holistic approach that includes both physical and mental health and self-care.
Why is positive body massage excluded?
Positive body massage was born from the fat acceptance movement led by black and queer women in the United States in the 1960s, who raised awareness of fat discrimination. It began as a movement to create a space for people whose bodies were rejected by society to come together, celebrate, and support each other. And while body massage positivity has made some progress toward a more inclusive definition of beauty, its focus has shifted as it has grown in popularity.
Body massage positivity began by focusing on overweight women who fit very traditional beauty ideals: size 14 or smaller, hourglass figure, usually white, and physically able-bodied. When we see the phrase “body massage positivity,” we usually think of size, and more specifically, overweight women. What about people of color, people with disabilities or chronic illnesses, transgender and gender non-conforming people? But they’re not the only group in body massage that positivity focuses on. The problem isn’t necessarily with body massage positivity as a concept, but with the fact that mainstream body massage positivity still conforms to many of the conventional beauty ideals, thereby alienating
Those who should be celebrated
Body massage positivity also fails to address the real reasons why people with marginalized identities fail to love their bodies: being a woman, being fat, being black, and being disabled, are not inherently bad. These reasons for body devaluation are socially constructed and systematically maintained, and they won’t change just because you love yourself. Positive attitudes towards body massage put the burden on non-fit people to change their attitudes towards themselves, even if their material circumstances haven’t changed.
