Toxic Positivity, Toxic Acceptance (Part 2)

So last time, in Part 1 of this discussion of …sunnier villains or antagonists, we had left off talking about how toxic positivity is all about the toxic person's comfort. And that this need to impose a certain behavior, dogma, and/or approach to reality in their environment leads to toxic acceptance. I mentioned Fat Acceptance and Body Positivity as a prime example of this behavioral pattern.

Before we get into the weeds again though, let's set some things straight, so we're all on the same page on what I'm talking about and where I want to draw the attention with this discussion- by doing some clear cut setting of principles and definitions, if you like. Not for Fat Acceptance or Body Positivity, but for what should be considered universal decent, ethical, and upstanding behavior for ourselves and our fellow human beings:

Offering unsolicited opinions and advice about a person's appearance, from their body shape to their taste in clothing to their makeup and anything else, is wrong and obnoxious. It is presumtuous in that whoever offers such commentary presumes to know the receiver's circumstances, choices, and status. It disregards the very real risk of that commentary being hurtful, undermining, and against that person's wellbeing, mental or emotional, or even physical. It disregards the very real risk of drawing the person's attention to something they already are struggling with or ruining a source of personal gratification for that person.

To be specific, since I'm about to use the Body Positivity/Fat Acceptance movements as my main example, I'll draw the line here and say that attacking people because they're fat/obese/morbidly obese by minimizing their existence just to the condition of their bodies, effectively denying them recognition of their personality just because they happen to be fat is also severely toxic. It's just another type of toxicity, ranging from that fancy 'I call it what I see it' toxicity to the 'tough love' toxicity that I'm not focusing on today (but I can discuss those if you'd like me to in a part 3! Let me know in the comments).

So no, when a person that happens to be fat goes to the beach, they have a right to wear a frigging bikini if they want to without harrassment or obnoxious staring or commentary about how they shouldn't have. They have a right to go out and eat at restaurants, without feeling like their menu choices will be scrutinized (nobody goes to a restaurant to diet, come on). And so on.

I hope I've been clear on that. Same goes for everything else regarding appearance, from things we have no choice about to things we have choice about, provided we don't hurt anyone else with our behavior. And no, not conforming to someone else's aesthetics doesn't qualify as harming that someone else. Tough luck.

So, that said, let's get into the weeds.

Originally, Body Positivity was a movement of non-toxic acceptance. It was basically just the tenet of accepting people without quid pro quos, more or less how I've already said we should behave to our fellow people anyway: accept people with their physical flaws, celebrate them for existing, and seek the beauty in each individual without seeking to change them in order to accept them. That included fat people, as was right.

This isn't toxic. This promotes actual positivity. However, as is the case with many movements, good themes are bent out of shape when taken to extremes. And when I say extremes I don't mean "extremely fat" or "extremely skinny" or whatever. I mean "extremely rigid" in that comfort of a toxically positive bubble.

Body positivity is supposed to make people feel comfortable in their own skin, and that's good. It's supposed to tackle tough topics without traumatizing people or making them defensive. What it's not supposed to do is try to deny reality to preserve that comfort beyond the framework of standard human interaction. I'll give you an example:

Fat activist Virgie Tovar once had an entire tirade because at a party, a person that wasn't her asked for a smaller slice of cake. And Virgie was triggered, feeling that that person attacked her fatness by not having a standard slice of cake and eating it all. So her demand was for another person to eat more than they wanted so that she would feel comfortable and not fragile about her own choice to have a full slice of cake. She has a whole over the top diatribe on why it's obnoxious to just not want to eat the frigging cake, by having people re-enact her obnoxious projections of people asking for less cake. And no, none of this is feminist. She wouldn't know feminism if it sat on her.

That's toxic acceptance. Why? Because it demands imposition on someone else's behavior (that does no harm to others) in order for the person demanding it to feel "accepted" - i.e. comfortable in their own skin. Same goes for demands that scientific evidence from years of research that state obesity to be a risk factor for various health issues be summarily discarded and instead, the non-scientific assertion that obesity is healthy be promoted in the name of "acceptance".

It's easy to spot if you reverse the grievance, and instead of having Vergie mock ladies asking for less cake, you have someone like Eugenia Cooney make an equally obnoxious video about fat ladies asking for double cake portions. Both versions are equally horrific and impose on other peoples' choices in order to force people to become like whoever is doing the imposition.

That is toxic acceptance. (And that video is mostly passive aggressive, but qualifies for 'toxic positivity' too)

Just as it is extremely toxic to walk up to a fat person and start listing health risks due to obesity, telling them to stop eating what they're eating, just as it is extremely toxic to dehumanize a person just because they happen to be fat, so it is extremely toxic to demand that reality be changed to fit a false narrative.

Like everything in life, boundaries are key in keeping toxicity away. Toxically positive people will demand toxic acceptance- anything that makes them even slightly uncomfortable (i.e. challenges the view they want to have of themselves and the world) is enough to set them into some kind of acting out until the threatening stimulus is eliminated.

And that is dangerous. That can cause physical, emotional, and psychological trauma. It's a building block for abuse and it's definitely a building block for cult-like behavior, especially when toxic acceptance circles demand full compliance with demands under pain of excommunication, as has happened with people who were shunned from the fat acceptance/body positivity movement just because they decided to lose weight or they decided to talk about the physical problems they have to deal with due to being obese.

So that can absolutely be your antagonist's or villain's M.O. (not the fat acceptance, the toxic positivity). They can be shiny, bubbly, toxically positive, and enforcing toxic acceptance of whatever weird reality they need in order for them to be king/queen/cream of the crop, leaders in society- their society.

Toxicity comes in ALL shapes and forms. All it takes is for a good tenet to be warped so that one person (or group of persons) can control the behavior of others in ways they otherwise wouldn't have had the right to.

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