Passages on body image from a variety of diverse perspectives

Body neutrality

Jessi Kneeland 2023, Body Neutral: A Revolutionary Guide to Overcoming Body Image Issues:

“[Y]ou don’t actually even need to ever have an opinion about your body! You don’t need to decide whether it’s good or bad, or to interpret what it means, or to like it or dislike it.”
“I want to encourage you from here on to view your body image issues through a neutral lens too. I know they’re unpleasant, but instead of rejecting them, judging them, or fighting against them, try just acknowledging that they exist, exactly as they are […] nonjudgmental awareness (sometimes called mindfulness) opens the door to both healing and appropriate action.”

Queer perspectives

From Body Neutral:

“Some [people] have body image issues because they live in, or have lived in, a marginalized body, and they’re understandably afraid of the discrimination, disrespect, exclusion, and even violence they know marginalized folks have to face.”

In The Contemporary Reader of Gender and Fat Studies (ed. Amy Erdman Farrell 2023):

“Koehle’s (2022) rhetorical analysis of blogs written by fat trans people found that gender, fatness, and race could not be separated when the bloggers were discussing their ability to pass because femininity is inextricably linked to whiteness and thinness. The trans Black women had a difficult time imagining that they really could be women […] felt exiled from their gender because they couldn’t meet the cisgender standards.” (Jeannine A. Gailey, “Undesirably different: Hyper(in)visibility and the gendered fat body”)
“A decade ago, my friend Drake reported to me that he had been denied ‘top
surgery’—a gender confirmation surgery that would remove his breasts. […] ‘Elective’ surgery was deemed inappropriate for someone of his size. When I pressed about the doctor’s data about outcomes for this surgery in high weight individuals, none was offered. Rather, I was told to consult ‘common sense.’ (Kimberley Dark, “Embodied Narration”)
“Thinness for women and muscularity for men define binary gender. Either way, if one seeks gender affirmation, one ‘must always be pushing away from fatness’ in order to fit comfortably within the parameters of ‘ideal’ gender.” (Jason Whitesel, “Big gay men entering the twenty-first century: Global perspectives on fat-affirming subcultures and imagery”)

The above points absolutely line up with my own experience:

When I dress in a way that emphasizes my curves — tight, fitted clothing — I am most often correctly gendered as a woman by others. When I dress in more relaxed or loose clothing, I am most often gendered incorrectly by others. Thus, my femininity is intimately linked to the salience of my body; I am granted permission to be a woman if, and only if, I emphasize my torso.
When I was speaking to a surgeon to plan my own bottom surgery (genital reconfiguration surgery), he told me I would need to lose 10 or 15 kg — this formed a large part of my reason not to pursue surgery. Many of my trans friends were told the same thing by their surgeons.

Health science

Maya Mathur and coauthors have some intriguing perspectives here:

“The current evidence base suggests that although both obese BMI and underweight BMI are consistently associated with increased all-cause mortality, overweight BMI (without obesity) is not meaningfully associated with increased mortality. In fact, a number of studies suggest modest protective, rather than detrimental, associations of overweight BMI with all-cause mortality. Given this current evidence base, clinical guidelines and physician perceptions substantially overstate all-cause mortality risks associated with the range of BMIs classified as ‘overweight’ but not ‘obese.’” (Mathur and Mathur 2024)
“Overall, we consider the question of whether being overweight (but not obese) affects all-cause mortality to be largely unresolved, though we suspect that effects are typically small and heterogeneous across populations. It is rather puzzling that public health messaging has almost exclusively discussed detrimental effects when in fact, there is currently not particularly robust evidence for effects in either direction.” (Mathur and VanderWeele 2022

For further reading, see my earlier blog post

Christianity

Christian perspectives on the body can be a two-edged sword. For example, some of the key Bible verses have an ambiguous legacy:

1 Genesis 27 has: “So God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them…” So far so good. My value is inherent and immutable. But the final passage here, “male and female he created them”, is so often weaponized in the modern world against queer and trans people.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 has: “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? […] Therefore honor God with your bodies.” Maintain the temple, with loving care, so it can function as intended. But this passage is embedded in a long diatribe against “sexual immorality”, a topic frequent in Paul’s letters that, in the modern world, is weaponized against queer people.

But I think there are also a lot of powerful perspectives from throughout the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament:

Grace in creation. The unconditional and unearned grace, given by God, is surely at the heart of the Christian message. Ephesians 2:8-10: “God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece.” Also consider Psalm 139 13-14: “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made…”. Thus, body image problems can be viewed as worldly standards obscuring this truth.
Abundance. Jesus turns water into wine at a wedding, so everyone can feast. Jesus’s presence causes fishermen to haul enormous catches of fish from the water (the suffering of those fish notwithstanding — another ambiguous legacy!). And, on multiple occasions, he multiplies bread and fish so everyone can have enough to eat. In the context of first-century Judea, living under Roman rule, it is understandable how abundance is such a powerful symbol of God’s presence — freedom from oppression and poverty, and the coming of a kingdom where everyone has enough to get by. Compare Luke 6:21: “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.” We also have the Old Testament’s Song of Solomon 7:2: “Your navel is a rounded goblet that never lacks blended wine. Your waist is a mound of wheat encircled by lilies.”
Inner beauty. 1 Samuel 16:7 has: “[T]he Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his [Eliab’s] appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him, for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” Compare to 1 Peter 3:3-4: “Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.”

Tattoos

In Not Just A Girl: Tattoo Podcast by Eddy Lou, episode “Dark Art of Sunshine” (2020-06-19), Tahlia Undarlegt describes:

“[Y]ou feel so much more in love with yourself and your body, and like, you’ve walked past a shop window, and you check yourself out and make sure you get a glimpse of the tattoo. […] I never ever used to expose my chest or cleavage at all, and then when I got my chest tattooed, I was like, I’m going to undo my buttons. I’m going to stop wearing, like, my buttons done all the way up. I’m going to start buying plunging necklines. I just want this to be on display because it’s so beautiful.”

In Tattoo Histories: Transcultural Perspectives on the Narratives, Practices, and Representations of Tattooing, ed. Sinah Theres Kloß, 2020:

“Bodies have to be understood as fluid, as projects or processes that cannot be thought of ‘as objects, upon which culture writes meanings, but as events that are continually in the process of becoming’. […] Tattoos engage in body projects in various ways; they influence both individual and communal processes of body construction…” (Sinah Theres Kloß, “Indelible Ink: An Introduction to the Histories, Narratives, and Practices of Tattooing”)
“[A]s Eda [a research participant] says earlier, she becomes ‘more me’ with her tattoos, a closer and more authentic representation of her inner self. The
participants grow into their bodies through their chosen body decoration and look closer to how they want to appear.” (Beverly Yuen Thompson, “Mi Familia: Latina Women in the US Negotiate Identity and Social Sanctions through Tattooing”)

Sports

From my earlier blog post, citing some peer-reviewed studies on body composition among professional footballers:

“The professional players seem to be simultaneously both taller and lighter than the general population. The professional players had BMIs about ~4-5 points lower than that of the general population, depending on country. This means that professional soccer selects for tall people who are naturally extremely slender or who work out to become extremely slender. This also means that if the general population had the same unusually tall average height as the professional soccer players, the general population’s average body mass would be higher still. […] the higher the level of soccer, the greater the departure of players’ body types from the general population; higher levels of soccer have more extreme body types.”

It is no secret that people’s bodies are highly salient in sports and that this salience enables both criticism and sexualisation of the body. Duncan (1990) writes: “The athlete’s physical appearance is an object of particular fascination for the viewer, for the body is the instrument through which sporting victories (or tragedies) are achieved. Athletes’ bodies bear the marks of physical conditioning: muscles, bulk, smoothness, or leanness. Furthermore, athletes appear in a state of relative undress as they participate in sport. Swimsuits, running shorts, tank tops, leotards, and other garments display the contours of their bodies. As spectators, we are encouraged to look hard at the athletes’ bodies, whether we are watching the game on television or gazing at a picture in Sports Illustrated.” (For further reading, see my earlier blog post.)

I find it telling that actual professional footballers suffer from significant body image issues. For example, Alex Scott — a celebrated defender whose 16-year career for Arsenal and 140 caps for England won her all sorts of awards and honours — reported feeling highly insecure about her the size of her butt and quads, particularly when working alongside professional models (see Scott’s 2022 memoir How (Not) to Be Strong). Likewise, Republic of Ireland forward Clare Shine reported significant eating issues (Scoring Goals in the Dark).