93. Body Neutral with Jessi Kneeland

Well, I am, yeah, as you said, the author of the book Body Neutral, which I wrote because I've been a body image coach for a very long time.

And the direction that my work has taken has been, you know, I kind of started like everyone back in the day, sort of self-love, body positivity, whatever.

But I was realizing very quickly that that just didn't feel accessible to a lot of people.

And also, it didn't really have any... action steps.

It was just sort of the idea that you could start or stop feeling a certain way.

And so, yeah, it just had a lot of flaws.

It focused on the individual and it ignored a lot of social context.

So ultimately, I found my way to body neutrality, which is not about feeling really anything.

It's about stripping away the meaning that you have learned to associate with your body, the false inflated significance that we have learned to place on top of our bodies and appearance and just letting it be what it is, which you could totally have feelings and preferences and opinions about.

But the way I always put it is like, if you had a huge zit on your forehead, like you would not be able to body positivity your way into going like, it's beautiful.

I'm beautiful, you know? Like that's just never going to happen and nor should it.

Like what is the point of that? Instead, a body neutral lens is being able to look in the mirror, roll your eyes, put some concealer on it and move on with your day.

Like it doesn't have power over you.

That's what we're looking for, right? So body neutrality to me is stripping away that false and inflated power that the way you look we've been taught has or should have and doesn't need to have.

Oh, so good.

I use that example of like, if I, you know, have a zit, I'm not gonna be like, I love this zit.

It makes me so happy.

But I also can't change it.

Like it's here.

I can hide it.

I can be angry about it.

I can I can beat myself up about it.

But that doesn't make the zit

go away.

I