The ‘Body Positivity’ Movement Is At Odds With Human Nature

“Self-acceptance influencer” Alex Light made waves this past week after posting a TikTok lauding actor Channing Tatum for his “body positive” comments on “The Kelly Clarkson Show.” Light thanked Tatum for admitting that maintaining his toned physique for the “Magic Mike” films “is not natural,” and is not something he recommends that other men aspire to.

The emergence of the “body positivity” movement is the latest offshoot of the therapeutic, moralistic mentality that has a hold in bourgeois “front row” society. The discourse that has emerged from this movement — with a ubiquity that has expanded astronomically since my childhood — is tinged with the flavor of the “character education” that I received in public schools in the early 2000s.

According to my elementary and middle school teachers, the elusive boogeyman known as “society” wants us to think that in order to be happy, we need a successful job, nice clothes, an attractive body, lots of friends, and expensive material possessions. But a truly happy person doesn’t need any of those superficial things. All they need is to be themselves, follow their hearts, be kind to others, and embrace their inner beauty.

Despite their insistent moral exhortations, I couldn’t deny my attraction to the glamorous lifestyles of celebrities. As I flipped through the pages of tabloid magazines, I dreamed about ways to boost my popularity. I stared into the mirror, fixating on what I wore and how I could make my body more attractive. As I took selfies, I schemed obsessively about how I could build up my Facebook profile … while the echo of my teachers saying “it’s who you are on the inside that counts” ran through my mind.

I knew all of these pursuits were superficial, but why, I wondered, couldn’t I stop dwelling on them? No matter how many times I told myself that my appearance and Facebook friend count didn’t define my worth, I never was fully convinced that this was true.

As time went on, I started to realize that something was missing. This “moral battle” was not as simplistic as I thought it was. It was made to seem that it all came down to a matter of merely choosing to either believe in your “inner” self-worth or to buy into society’s superficial standards. What was missing from all these moral imperatives was an ontological frame of reference. A way to make sense of my selfhood’s origin and destiny. 

Put more simply, what was missing were answers to certain fundamental questions about our desires, our bodies, and human nature more broadly: What does it mean to be human? What is the purpose of our bodies? Why do I desire to be loved? Where does desire come from in the first place?

The more I started to ask these questions, the more I was able to delve more deeply into my “superficial” preoccupations, rather than to moralize futilely over them: Why do so many of us want to be rich and live a glamorous