Body positivity is important to me because I know that shaming people into losing weight doesn't work. All you end up doing is creating a cycle of shame where people feel awful about themselves, which doesn't create positive change. If we allow people to feel comfortable in their own bodies, they are more likely to decide that they want to start working out. When I started working out, it had nothing to do with wanting to get fit. It was part of my treatment plan for managing my GAD. Similarly, until I felt well enough to start taking care of myself I didn't feel good enough about myself to start exercising.
I would really love for the conversation about health and exercise to center around doing things that make you feel good. That your meals don't need to be earned and that you don't need to deprive yourself of things that you enjoy to be healthy.
Through more casual web browsing, I came across this website. I'm going to reference it specifically, but it follows the same trend as many fitness communities: paying lip service to body positivity while only representing a single body type.
At first glance, there's nothing really wrong with Fit Bottomed Girls. It gets its title from a Queen song. They use cutesy graphics. They post daily articles about things related to fitness, motivation and inspiration, nutrition and mindfulness. There's even a nice little graphic at the bottom of the page proclaiming that "Fit bottoms come in all shapes and sizes."
Do you notice anything in this photo?
If fit bottomed girls come in all shapes and sizes, why are you only showing girls in the same size: petite and slim? Perhaps those three women are meant to be the site's three owners, but why use the slogan if that's the case?
Upon further perusal of the website, I found an article where one of the site owners talks about how they have finally found stock images that look like them. Okay, great. Maybe they'll start using those stock images instead. Did they? Not that I can see.
In another post about minding your own business about other people's fitness goals (published after the article about the better representation in fitness stock photos, mind) - a concept with which I agree wholeheartedly - they're again using a stock photo wherein all the women pictured are slim and petite.
See the little pram in the top right corner? This was originally posted on their sister site for pregnant women, new mothers and young families. None of these women look pregnant, and none of them look like a recent mother. Granted, it's a stock photo and while the post about "minding your own fitness" is new, the photo itself may not be. I don't know, and I don't particularly care to find out.
I just think that if you're going to tout yourself as an inclusive website, you should make more of an effort to actually follow through on that ideal.
The last thing that I take issue with about Fit Bottomed Girls is their tagline: "Keeping a lid on the junk in the trunk." *rolls eyes forever*
Firstly, the size of your butt has very little to do with your overall fitness level. You can be fit and have a big butt - in fact that often happens as your overall fat percentage drops and the gluteus muscles become more prominent. You can be direly unhealthy and have a pancake butt. You can be crazy fit and have no butt to speak of at all.
Can we please just accept that people are going to be whatever size and shape they are? Can we stop portraying a single image of fitness like it's the only real one? And for the love of all things purple, can we stop coming up with stock photos of women vapidly smiling into their undressed salads? Because an undressed salad is just sad. You have nothing to smile about, girl.
Screenshot photos taken from fitbottomedgirls.com. Woman with crazy eyes and undressed salad taken from http://staging.thekitchn.com/10-totally-heinous-crimes-against-salad-that-need-to-be-stopped-220244.
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