As the years go by . . .
I've moved on from 'body positivity' to 'body neutrality'
LOS ANGELES — How do you deal with the process of aging?
Aging ought to be considered good fortune. If you don’t age, you’re dead. But being old is also being marginalized — unless you’ve built up the status and cash to maintain your grip on influence. Power is a great aphrodisiac. Otherwise, it’s “OK Boomer!”
Soon, it will be “OK Xer!” And then “OK Millennial!”
Many Americans (probably most humans) fight the aging process tooth and nail. Being older is a profound negative in our culture. There’s a $100-billion cosmetics industry out there to help. Botox is an additional $16 billion. There were 1.5 million plastic surgeries in the U.S. in 2022. Very much of this is people wanting to shave a few years off their apparent age.
All the makeup and cosmetic surgery and testosterone boosting in the world will not allow you to live one second longer. In my POV, it is all a waste of time and money.
Of course, there will always be a desire for touchups and modifications. There is no culture in the world without makeup and body mods of some sort. Understand why you are doing what you are doing. Do it with a specific intent to satisfy yourself or meet a specific requirement and not to please an amorphous “other.”
I have come to accept the simple truth expressed in Desiderata:
I’m going to make an assumption here: Most people want to live well beyond the age at which their aesthetics are at their peak. How does one gracefully surrender the things of youth?
Gracefully means accepting the natural changes as they come. It doesn’t mean liking the changes. It means accepting the inevitable without rancor or denial. At the same time, it means maintaining the physical plant as best as practical. Do what you need to do to stay healthy as long as you can.
And maybe you are good for one more adventure…
I once met a group of PCT hikers and shared some water with them. We talked about the trail, life, nudism, getting older and body positivity. The woman in the group said body positivity is not the way to go. It too often becomes an acceptance of unhealthy habits that could be changed. Your body is NOT perfect.
I don’t love my body unconditionally. Instead, I love long hikes and tossing my granddaughter into the air. I love the sun and wind on my skin and seeing and hearing the world around me. I love a clear mind. I love orgasms. I love my body indirectly because it enables those things. If I try to improve my body, it is to better enable the things I love, not because of someone else’s aesthetics. In that regard, a few pounds, scars, wrinkles and sags are meaningless.
I've moved to body neutrality. It is what it is, and I won't love it or hate it anymore. I'm going to keep it in as best repair as is practical. A body is a tool to carry your brain around and do the things you want/need to do. It doesn't exist to satisfy the desires of other people.
Body neutrality is simply the act of taking a neutral stance toward your body — both emotionally and physically. That means not supporting the hatred toward your body's “limitations” or investing time and energy to love it either. You can simply be at peace with your body. — Web MD
As you get older, you will look older. Accept it as a badge of honor and not a demerit. Though, if I had it to do again, I'd have a shitload of nude photos from when I was young and fit just to remind me of who I was.
I understand the difference, in fact I always thought of Body Positivity as what WebMD called Body Neutrality. But I never really looked or felt about my body the way most people who embrace Body Positivity do. It was more Body Acceptance. This is me, this is my body. Oh well. Sure I could attempt to change it, spend countless hours and dollars trying to improve it, in fact did for many years of my life, with little to nothing to show for it. I'd lived with an overwhelming desire to be a nudist, to live clothes free whenever I could. But because of my body, what I and the rest of the world thought of it, there was no way I could ever realize that dream.
Then I learned of the "Nudist Mindset" when it came to Body Positivity, Body Acceptance or Body Neutrality. Nudists see but don't judge. They look at you for the person you are, not the way you "look". Once I fully understood this, I became my dream. A nudist. Did my body change? No. Did the way I felt about my body change? No. I'm still the same skinny tall frame person I was 50 years ago. What changed was how I cared what you or anyone else about my body. I've been Body Shamed pretty much my entire life. And it continues to this very day, the double looks, the smirks, the whispered comments and pointing. In the last decade or so, Body Shaming became taboo. You can't do that anymore. But this forbidden "act", only applied to those who are overweight.
For years I did everything I could to hide my body. Today, I don't care what others may say or think of it. That's their problem, not mine. So I guess I'm Body Neutral, I really don't care what anyone calls it, I'm me and I'm a nudist, no longer afraid or worried about what anyone thinks. Because when I'm with fellow nudists, We're all the same.
Walt Whitman: "Human bodies are words, myriads of words, (In the best poems re-appears the body, man’s or woman’s, well-shaped, natural, gay, Every part able, active, receptive, without shame or the need of shame.)" There are photos of Walt at an advanced age - naked. He wasn't ashamed.