Let's start with some uncomfortable mathematics. Throughout human history, the vast majority of bodies have been considered unremarkable, unappealing, or outright ugly by their society's beauty standards.
This isn't a tragic accident - it's how beauty works.
For something to be beautiful, most other things must be ordinary or worse. Your body, statistically speaking, falls into that majority. And pretending otherwise isn't kindness - it's cruelty wrapped in pastel Instagram quotes.
The body positivity movement has spent years insisting that "all bodies are beautiful," but this phrase reveals the trap we're still caught in. We're so desperate to escape the hierarchy of physical worth that we've simply tried to expand the category of "beautiful" rather than questioning why beauty should determine human value at all.
It's like trying to solve poverty by declaring everyone rich - the words change, but the system remains intact.
The delusion of beauty
Beauty doesn't exist in individual bodies; it exists in the space between minds, in what sociologists call inter-subjective reality. We collectively agree that certain proportions, symmetries, and characteristics represent attractiveness, and these shared meanings become more real than any objective physical truth. Beauty is a cultural agreement that requires constant maintenance through exclusion.
This inter-subjective reality serves specific functions. It creates hierarchies that organise social interaction, generates endless consumer markets, and provides a seemingly natural justification for unequal treatment.
The agreement that some bodies are more valuable than others feels so obvious that we forget it's a choice we're making collectively, every day, through countless small acts of judgment and preference.
But here's what body positivity advocates don't want to acknowledge: these shared meanings can't be wished away through individual self-acceptance. You might personally reject beauty standards, but you still live inside other people's inter-subjective reality, and they haven't rejected anything.
The politics of acceptable difference
Body positivity practices what we might call "palatability politics" - the unconscious agreement about which forms of difference can be incorporated into mainstream acceptance without fundamentally challenging deeper hierarchies. The movement has undergone a partial transformation while preserving its core exclusionary mechanisms.
Look at who gets celebrated in body positive campaigns: plus-size models with hourglass figures, clear skin, and conventionally attractive faces. Women with visible disabilities, facial differences, or severe skin conditions remain largely invisible.
If we truly believed all bodies were beautiful, we would celebrate rotting yellow teeth in toothpaste ads. We would put people with severe acne scarring on magazine covers. We would feature bodies ravaged by illness, marked by self-harm, or shaped by genetic conditions that make others uncomfortable. We would normalise facial deformities, visible disabilities, and all the ways human flesh can deviate from conventional attractiveness.
We don't.
Instead, body positivity functions as a carefully managed expansion of beauty categories - just enough inclusion to feel progressive, but not so much that it threatens the fundamental system that creates bodily hierarchies in the first place.
The economics of inadequacy
The reason body positivity can't fulfil its promises becomes clear when you follow the money. The global beauty industry is worth over $500 billion annually. The fashion industry adds another $2.5 trillion. Diet culture, fitness, and cosmetic surgery contribute hundreds of billions more. These aren't just businesses - they're the economic engines of entire societies.
All of these industries depend on a simple premise: your body, as it currently exists, is inadequate. They need you to believe that transformation is possible, desirable, and necessary. True body acceptance - the kind where people genuinely stopped caring about physical appearance -would represent an economic catastrophe.
Advertisers understand this better than activists. They don't just reflect existing beauty standards; they actively construct and maintain them. Every advertisement featuring impossibly perfect bodies reinforces the inter-subjective reality that makes those standards feel natural and inevitable. They need exclusivity because inclusion doesn't sell products.
Consider what would happen if people believed their bodies were fine as they are. Cosmetics sales would plummet. Fashion consumption would drop dramatically. Gym memberships would expire unused. The plastic surgery industry would collapse. Dating apps built on visual sorting would lose their user base.
Your bodily dissatisfaction isn't a personal failing- it's an economic necessity. The system requires most people to feel inadequate to continue functioning. Body positivity, at its most successful, can only ever be a pressure release valve that allows just enough acceptance to prevent total rebellion while maintaining the essential structure of manufactured want.
Why nothing will change
Even if we somehow collectively agreed to abandon beauty standards tomorrow, we'd be fighting millions of years of evolutionary psychology. Humans make aesthetic judgments about faces and bodies within milliseconds of visual contact. These assessments happen faster than conscious thought and influence everything from hiring decisions to romantic attraction to basic social treatment.
No amount of activism can rewire these automatic responses. You can't think your way out of snap judgments any more than you can consciously control your startle reflex. The most well-intentioned person still experiences immediate aesthetic reactions to the bodies around them, even if they don't act on those judgments overtly.
This means that even people who intellectually embrace body acceptance continue to treat attractive individuals differently in subtle, unconscious ways. They make more eye contact, smile more readily, listen more attentively, and extend more social grace.
Meanwhile, those deemed less attractive receive less attention, fewer opportunities, and more sceptical treatment - all while everyone involved believes they're being fair and unbiased.
The inter-subjective reality of beauty standards operates regardless of individual enlightenment. It's embedded in employment practices, dating algorithms, social media engagement, and countless micro-interactions that shape daily life.
The trap of false liberation
The cruellest aspect of body positivity isn't its failure to change beauty standards - it's the additional burden it places on those who don't meet them. Now, not only must you navigate a world that judges you harshly for your appearance, but you must also practice gratitude and self-love for the body that causes you social disadvantage.
If you struggle with body image, you're not just dealing with external judgment; you're failing at body positivity too. The movement has created a new form of inadequacy: the inability to love yourself properly. This adds psychological pressure to existing social pressure, demanding emotional labour from those already bearing the costs of beauty hierarchies.
Meanwhile, those who do approximate conventional beauty standards get to feel virtuous for embracing body positivity without experiencing its limitations. They can celebrate their bodies while remaining unconsciously biased toward others who look like them. It's a perfect system for maintaining existing hierarchies while feeling progressive about it.
No escape
The harsh reality is that you can't simply opt out of a world that judges you by your appearance. Even if you reject beauty standards, pretty much everyone else around you hasn't. You still live in their inter-subjective reality.
Your employer will unconsciously favour more attractive candidates. Potential romantic partners will swipe past you based on split-second visual assessments. Strangers will treat you differently based on how closely you approximate their beauty ideals. Service workers will be warmer to conventionally attractive customers.
You cannot think your way out of a system that operates whether you believe in it or not. The inter-subjective reality of beauty standards will continue to shape your life experiences regardless of your personal enlightenment. People will judge your competence, worth, and character based on your physical appearance, and no amount of body neutrality will change their behaviour toward you.
The most honest conclusion isn't liberation - it's recognition. Your body probably isn't beautiful, the world will treat you accordingly, and this will affect your opportunities, relationships, and daily interactions for the rest of your life.
You're trapped in other people's aesthetic judgments, whether you participate willingly or not.
