Embracing Body Neutrality
Why going beyond body positivity to body neutrality might not only improve your self-image and contentment, but make your sex life better too
Recently, I ran across an article, “Body neutrality gives me the freedom not to love my body” by Payal Dhar. While it doesn’t discuss sexuality specifically, I think it’s directly applicable to having a better sex life, or at least in finding contentment in the sex life you have.
There is a growing sex positivity movement. I contributed to a recent book, Sex Positive Now: Everything you need to know about sex positivity, in large part because I believe strongly in the sex positivity movement.
But sex involves bodies. How we feel about our bodies affects our sex lives. How we feel about other people’s bodies affects our sex lives. The body positivity movement is directly related to our sexualities too.
But Dhar’s article offers yet another perspective on how we might see our bodies. Perhaps their perspective can not only improve self-confidence and foster general contentment, but also improve our sex lives.
In their 20s and 30s, Dhar would see themselves in the mirror or in photographs and not like the body they saw. That’s not uncommon in our society. In Dhar’s case, their discontent with their body rose to the level of constant distress.
Embracing the message of body positivity helped, but it wasn’t until they stumbled on the concept of body neutrality that they found a mindset that truly helped.
I tried to absorb the message of body positivity, that I was just fine as I was, but it felt like a lie to think of myself as beautiful. Then I stumbled upon the idea of body neutrality – that my self-worth isn’t tied to my body at all. Now this was an idea I could get behind. This could make sense. After all, being queer and autistic, not fitting in is my superpower. Why, then, were my body-image issues so mainstream?
For those of us suffering body-image problems, the path from self-disgust to true neutrality is a journey unto itself.
And body positivity might have some downsides too.
‘Body positivity can be guilt-inducing for people who are struggling to embrace their appearance,’ Harriger says. A study from Clarkson University in New York in 2022 found that body positivity messages often miss their mark, and end up being ‘more harmful to body image’.
American culture, and likely most world cultures these days, worships at the altar of beauty. Advertising preys on insecurities about our physical appearance. Social media amplifies the beautiful people over and over in an onslaught of usually unattainable attractiveness. Friends sometimes post carefully curated images of themselves in their gym-chiseled form. All of this contributes to how we see ourselves, and it’s often not good.
While historically body image issues mostly plagued women, nowadays it’s creeping into the cultural ethos for people of any gender. As a gay man, I’ve certainly seen my community wrestle with this issue as a certain gay male body ideal permeates our events, media, and networks. It’s impossible for anyone to escape social pressure to be beautiful, or least more beautiful than we already are, because, well, it’s never quite good enough to satisfy those anonymous others we imagine judging us at every turn.
Body dysmorphia is a disorder we’ve become more aware of in recent years. Studies have shown that 0.7% to 2.4% of the general population suffers from body dysmorphia, but anecdotally I believe those numbers are higher in certain populations.
Regardless, whether our unhappiness with our bodies rises to the level of disorder, the influence of perfect body messaging is impossible to avoid. It’s everywhere. We’re making some progress pushing back against it, but especially as long as people can make money from fostering our dislike of our bodies and appearance, and rampant capitalism will ensure that, each of us has to individually come to peace with our bodies.
Enter the concept of body neutrality. I had not heard of this before, but I like it.
Body neutrality, on the other hand, moves the focus from appearance altogether. ‘Actually, the way you look is the least interesting thing about you,’ says Harriger. ‘Your value comes from who you are, and not what you look like.”
That sounds great and I fully support body neutrality. We are indeed far more than our appearance despite prevalent harsh judgments about people’s bodies to the contrary. But how do we get to such a place as body neutrality? It’s not easy. It’s always going to be a slog, but I believe a slog worth undertaking.
London-based psychotherapist Amy Launder writes that embracing body neutrality can shift our internal conversation from being forced to love our body and appearance to a calm acceptance of our bodies, appreciating what our bodies can do for us.
Since trans people and the trans experience are front and center in the contemporary political culture war being waged by Republican right-wing forces in the United States, these issues can uniquely impact queer and trans communities.
For those of us on the queer/trans spectrum, there is a bizarre dichotomy of being at once trapped within social expectations but also free from them. ‘As a queer person … I had already failed because I wasn’t interested in men,’ says Heather. ‘So it freed me up to explore some stuff.’
The entire article is worth reading. It made me realize the close association between how we feel about our own and other bodies and how comfortable we are exploring bodies erotically, solo or with others. Body neutrality includes body positivity, but it drives self-acceptance deeper to a more self-loving realm.
Coming to a place where we accept everyone as beautiful is difficult. But everyone is beautiful. Everyone. No exceptions. At least in the physical sense. That does not mean we must find everyone sexually attractive. It’s our choice to identify those people with whom we have adequate attraction to engage with them erotically. But acknowledging that everyone is beautiful in their own way gives us permission to more readily explore our sexualities, allow others to do the same, and without as much pressure to conform to societal norms as part of that process.
Book – Sex: How To Do Everything
Sex: How to Do Everything by Em (Emma Taylor) and Lo (Lorelei Sharkey) was published a while ago, but I still like it enough to give it a push here.
The authors of this book describe their writings on sexuality as informative but fun, opinionated but nonjudgmental, and sexy but never sleazy. The book lives up to their claim. It’s a visually stunning book that offers clear and concise sex advice on a range of topics and it does so while maintaining a sense of humor and lightheartedness that’s a refreshing change from the sometimes clinical explanations of sexual technique found in other works.
Beautiful photographs by Rankin are generously merged with the text to provide a visual educational experience while reading.
Do you want to pick up some tips on improving the basic intercourse experience? Or do you want to explore some BDSM or roleplay? This book can serve as a wonderful resource for both, and much more.
Em and Lo offer up an abundance of sound advice and technique tips amidst nicely demarcated chapters on seduction, anatomy and orgasm, manual sex, oral sex, intercourse, anal play, sex toys, fantasy, and sexual health.
Those of my readers who fancy themselves to be among the more hardcore of the kinky might find this book a bit too gentle and introductory in nature. However, that’s one of this book’s charms. It caters to the larger audience of readers for whom sexual exploration is something that simply enhances life and relationships.
I particularly appreciate the open-minded and nonjudgmental approach of the book. All sexual paths are considered valid and good as long as everyone is looking out for the wellbeing of themselves and others while they do it.
It’s nice to see a book available to the general adult public that covers such a gamut of sexuality topics in such a friendly and non-sensationalistic manner. While the authors clearly wrote this book for a heterosexual readership, there’s no reason other sexual orientations can’t find plenty in this book to improve their sex lives as well.
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