How the White Body-Positive and Self-Love Movement Hinges on Anti-Blackness and How We Can Stop It

Growing up, I wasn’t taught to have a friendly, loving relationship with my body despite what my parents would have wanted. Our society feeds us toxic messages about what we should look like, and how we should aspire to be a certain weight. Like many of us, I was conditioned to hate my body. But as a cis, white woman with thin-privilege, I know society affirms and accepts me, and that my body is considered the “norm” or “default.” I see myself in ads and magazines. I see myself in TV shows. Our society plasters images of thin, cis, white women all around us from cereal boxes to billboards. This glorification of thin, cis, white womanhood is a centuries old campaign rooted in an anti-fat, anti-Black ethos.

Now with the advent of body-positivity, as well as a cultural and trending focus on inclusion and diversity, we are seeing more people talk about their bodies and loving themselves at any weight, size, or shape. Of course, the only people getting amplified and centered, however, are white women. As Sydney Greene points out in her essay, “There is No Liberation for All Bodies Without the LIberation of Fat Black Women and Femmes,” white supremacy has infiltrated the movement:

The body positivity movement originally carved out a space where acceptance and…