Megan Crabbe is calling BS on our culture’s obsession with dieting. Following a lifetime of eating disorders and body hatred, Megan has been using her social media platform to put an end to the detrimental messages spread by the diet industry. Under the online moniker of BodyPosiPanda, the body positive advocate encourages her 1.1 million followers to realise our culture is the problem, not our bodies.
She also stresses the impact dieting culture has on our mental health. “The key of it is even if someone is unhealthy, they are still worthy of respect and they shouldn’t be made to hate themselves because hating yourself isn’t healthy at any size,” she says.
Here, Megan speaks to GLAMOUR about our detrimental diet industry, the absurdity of the ‘bikini body’ and why all bodies are worthy of respect.
The body positive movement allowed me to reclaim so much life I’d been putting on hold or denying myself because I believed my body wasn’t good enough.
I came into the body positive movement from a lifetime of dieting, eating disorders and hating my body. Then I stumbled across this whole movement online saying that’s not true, you have another option to respect and accept the body you have and stop punishing yourself for it. When I discovered that, my entire worldview shifted and it really gave me a chance to reclaim so much life I’d been putting on hold or denying myself because I believed my body wasn’t good enough. I’d gone my entire life not knowing this was an option, so I thought how many other people out there have no idea they’re actually allowed to accept their bodies. I strongly felt I needed to tell people they don’t have to spend their lives dieting and hating themselves. I really feel that I’ve got to spread this message as much as I can and Instagram was the natural platform to do that because that’s where the community was at the time.
I refuse to spend a single day more putting my life on hold because I don’t have the body our culture says is the right one.
The big turning point was learning why I hated my body in the first place. Most of us go through our lives thinking hating our bodies is the norm, that it’s our fault because we don’t try hard enough or we don’t have enough willpower to change. I always blamed myself and my body and thought there was no other way. I started learning about body positivity and things like diet culture and fat phobia which is our cultural obsession with weight loss and thinness being the only way to be good enough. Learning all these terms that have fuelled our body hatred and taught us our bodies aren’t good enough was the first step to accepting my body. There’s a $60 billion diet industry in America and a £2 billion diet industry in the UK that thrives on teaching us our bodies aren’t good enough. There’s something bigger than us teaching us to feel the way we do about our bodies.
We are not to blame, our bodies are not the problem. Letting go of that blame and realising it wasn’t my fault and this is something that has been done to me my entire life allowed me to realise I deserved better and that’s a starting point for anyone whose really struggling with their body. I was a child when I first thought my body was wrong and I now realise I never deserved that. No one ever deserved to be made to feel like their body was wrong. We all deserve better than hating ourselves for our entire lives.
Being on holiday in a bikini is about creating memories and experiences, it is not about your body.
The thing about the bikini body is that if you are going somewhere that requires you to wear a bikini, you’re going there to make some memories and have experiences with people you love. You’re not an object in a bikini that other people are going to walk past and cast judgement on you. You’re there to live your best life.
Body positivity backlash comes from a place of misunderstanding and misguided assumptions.
We hear a lot about the health argument and how body positivity is supposedly bad for people’s health. We have so many misguided assumptions about bodies and health in our culture. The real key is that body positivity isn’t about whether someone’s healthy or beautiful, it’s about the fact that all bodies deserve to be treated with respect whether they’re fat, thin, disabled, all genders, all ages. There’s huge bodies of evidence out there that tell us health is about so much more than size anyway. The key of it is even if someone is unhealthy, they are still worthy of respect and they shouldn’t be made to hate themselves because hating yourself isn’t healthy at any size. Mental health has to be included in this conversation as well.
The health effects of stigma that comes from fat phobia. There is so much hatred and prejudice and the effects, both mental and physical, cannot be underrated. It’s so bad for a human’s wellbeing and health and yet we still think it’s ok to berate and belittle and judge people based on their size. If we truly care about people’s health, we will respect them and not let them believe they are any less based on how they look.
I’m very ruthless with online trolls.
I spare no one from the block button. I realised pretty quickly that when someone is trolling you, you are not the one with the problem. They are the one with the problem by making assumptions about you and actually it’s not on you to try and change everyone’s minds. This year I’ve realised it’s ok to not be liked by everybody and my entire existence doesn’t have to be getting people to like me or agree with me to what I do to have value. Carrying that has helped enormously. It’s being ok with not always being liked and the fact it’s more important to have integrity with your messages.
Our culture is the problem, not our bodies.
Whenever I do a live event, it really brings home to me how much work there is still left to do. We still have so few spaces in the real world where we can come together, talk about our bodies and how we feel. When I was putting together the Never Say Diet Club, I was basing it on a mock weight loss group because I believe they are one of the few places we can all go and talk about our bodies but then we are done we are still told changing our bodies is the answer. I wanted to create a space where after you’re done feeling connected and understood, you learn you are not the problem and the culture is the problem. We are allowed to question the culture rather than our bodies.
Tickets for Megan Jayne Crabbe’s Never Say Diet Club tour are on sale now via https://myticket.co.uk/artists/bodyposipanda
