\n<\/p>\n
I<\/span>n 1981 the CD was born and so was I. Both arrivals were surprising and have drifted in and out of fashion ever since. As a baby, my majestic \u201cchonk lord\u201d status was cause for celebration and an indication of prosperity. But from a young age I noticed that my presence seemed to offend other people. When I was seven, I remember asking to have a go at skipping, after having turned the rope for everyone else. One child enlightened me on why I couldn\u2019t: I was too fat to skip.<\/p>\n Children learn hierarchy from adults and then their peers. Who belongs, who doesn\u2019t and why. My classmates learned from adults to see me as something to mock and despise. Even my own well-meaning father once sat me down and told me that nobody would love, trust or employ me due to my body shape. This didn\u2019t shock me; I\u2019d already picked up what everyone was putting down.<\/p>\n Overriding genetics and environment is a tall order, but I learned quickly that if I leaned into my brainy side, and could make people laugh, this might compensate for the space I took up. This was the era of Weight Watchers, Aerobics Oz Style and heroin chic, and the ideal body was unattainable and contradictory. You could only be muscular if you were male. Women needed to be thin, but not so thin they looked unfeminine (whatever that meant). There was nothing worse than \u201cthunder thighs\u201d. Breakfast cereals were seemingly the answer to everyone\u2019s problems. BMI had not yet been exposed as a flawed and racist scam, and failing to look Just Right (cereal reference!) was a moral failure. I kept my head down as much as I could until my mid-20s.<\/p>\n Although the fat acceptance movement kicked off before I was a twinkle in my father\u2019s eye, it took until the 2010s for body positivity to reach the mainstream. More than a kind appraisal of all presentations, body positivity was a philosophy that stared down overt and implied criticism of shape, size, ability and skin tone and served up the alternative. All historically marginalised bodies were now to be embraced and treated with reverence. By then, I\u2019d had enough of people deciding I was a piece of crap solely because of my size. For me, body positivity felt like stark relief from a lifetime of being sent to the shame corner.<\/p>\n Sadly, like most things, the body positivity movement was eventually scooped up and repurposed by advertisers to sell clothes and lifestyles. The people once served by the movement were discarded; it was fine to be fat now, as long as you were also conventionally beautiful and very airbrushed.<\/p>\n But then along came body neutrality. Where body positivity was geared toward loving your body and insisting that everything about everyone\u2019s appearance was gorgeous, body neutrality was devoid of hierarchy. \u201cMy body is fat\u201d is a true statement; it doesn\u2019t need to be couched in compliments. It is as accurate as saying \u201ca disco ball is shiny\u201d or \u201cthat grass is green\u201d.<\/p>\n I see body neutrality as being similar to being cold and getting a jumper: you\u2019d neither celebrate nor criticise someone for feeling cold, or for wanting to be warm. My body isn\u2019t wrong because it\u2019s cold. It isn\u2019t wrong because it\u2019s fat. I\u2019m not an amazing person just because I\u2019d be more comfortable if I was warm, or because I choose to eat an apple or hot chips.<\/p>\n Body neutrality also pairs nicely with autism and my love of the literal, as it turns out. I couldn\u2019t settle on what I believed about my own body when I was so focused on what everyone else thought. I had understood every hateful statement hurled at me to be accurate. I can now file those thoughts away with other outdated notions like prescribing heroin for toothaches or low-rise skinny jeans.<\/p>\n <\/span>My Body is My Home by Jasper Peach and illustrated by Beci Orpin.<\/span> Photograph: Allen & Unwin<\/p>\n When I decided to write a book for young children about body neutrality, I spoke with several people who know more than I do, including the total brainiac scientist and author Dr Emma Beckett. Growing up in the same household, Emma\u2019s umpteen siblings all had differently shaped bodies even though their food intake and body movement was almost identical. The same is true of the broader community: genetics, environment and economics all come into play. Size is not solely determined by self-control.<\/p>\n My wife and I have tried to raise our children using neutral language where possible. No forced positivity and no heavy shame. Bodies are described the same way we describe anything else. One of our dogs resembles a wiggly pile of wigs, the tree out front is tall, and the way my children describe me without prompting makes my heart sing.<\/p>\n A few weeks ago, our nine-year-old asked if bodies change and \u201cget bigger in their tummies\u201d when they grow up. \u201cBodies do change, but they tend to follow their own patterns,\u201d I said. \u201cWe respond to joy and safety just as much as movement and nutrition.\u201d After bedtime stories, milksweet and sleepy, he patted my upper arms and said \u201cI love these floppy bits, they\u2019re so good for cuddles.\u201d There was no manufactured consolation in his words. I felt as if I was watching harm dissolve before it could take hold.<\/p>\n If I\u2019d been taught about body neutrality as a child, I can\u2019t begin to imagine how much easier things could have been. Not just for me, but for everyone convinced that their size was the result of being weak-willed or broken. In 1981, CDs were born and so was I. Neither of us has stayed in fashion, but there has always been a place for us \u2013 and there always will be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 1981 the CD was born and so was I. Both arrivals were surprising and have drifted in and out of fashion ever since. As a baby, my majestic \u201cchonk lord\u201d status was cause for celebration and an indication of prosperity. But from a young age I noticed that my presence seemed to offend other<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[1868,4266,37,7623,10688,24588,8645,2654,260,6200,3038],"class_list":{"0":"post-49693","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-body","9":"tag-fat","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-helped","12":"tag-lifetime","13":"tag-neutrality","14":"tag-positivity","15":"tag-shame","16":"tag-shed","17":"tag-wellbeing","18":"tag-wrong"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/49694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}