Body Acceptance Isn’t Resignation
Something profound was said to me recently and it has stayed with me:
Acceptance isn’t resignation
Wow.
The person that said this to me wasn’t talking about body image specifically, but that is exactly where this statement took me.
Body acceptance can be the key to a life that is a lot less stressful. That is easy and enjoyable. That is more healthy. More confident.
But when it comes to body and weight, acceptance often gets viewed as resignation.
To accept (according to Oxford languages) is to believe or come to recognize as valid or correct.
Body acceptance is coming to realize that there is not actually anything wrong with your body, only messages about bodies that are wrong that make you feel wrong about your body.
Your body is already valid, it is correct and you are coming home to its correctness.
To resign (according to Oxford languages) is to accept that something undesirable cannot be avoided.
Resignation is way more negative. It sounds like giving up. It sounds like judgement from someone else that you are giving up and letting yourself go. It sounds like the accusing messages that we get from society that if you are not working on getting or keeping yourself smaller then you are resigning to the inevitable undesirable outcome.
Acceptance and resignation get conflated.
But acceptance is not resignation.
So what’s my point… my point is that halfway through the year, when so many feel discouraged by new year’s resolutions not maintained, you don’t have to resign. You can accept.
To the woman who has battled with her body for years, losing and gaining weight, you don’t have to resign, you don’t have to keep going either, you can accept.
To the woman who has carefully walked the exhausting tightrope of “healthy” eating in fear that she will gain weight, you don’t have to resign, or keep going, you can accept.
Acceptance is powerful.
It’s saying that your body is valid, it is correct. And not because it has met someone else’s standard for what a body should be but because it IS a body, it is your body, and that is enough.
And now you take back your power and you get to decide what messages you will listen to as truths about your body. And you get to take back all of the energy and time you put into your body and you get to do something else with it.