Are you ready for our third debate? This week we’re discussing body positivity –does this movement have any negative effects?
Feel free to watch our pre-debate discussion before watching our full debate.
This episode Carrie Sheffield is debating Bold Contributor Catie Perry (not the famous singer). And we have the lovely Alyona Minkovski to moderate and keep us in check.
Here are some quotes from Carrie’s opening statement:
“Kevin also mentioned [in our pre-debate conversation] a study that showed for the first time in decades the average American lifespan is now going down and that’s from government data, from the Center for Disease Control. And that’s really tragic…The Center for Disease Control also reported that obesity and being overweight is associated with high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, low quality of life, mental illness, gall bladder disease –there are so many issues associated with being overweight or obese. We need to be very conscious of this…There’s a hashtag associated with the body positivity movement:…#LoseHateNotWeight. I’m not gonna disagree that we should lose the hate…but the ‘not weight’ part, I think that’s leading to what I’m worried about which is body passivity…We need to be proactive about our health and we can’t kid ourselves that if we just have positive viewpoints…that we aren’t going to have consequences.”
Here are some quotes from Catie’s opening statement:
“If we’re asking if the body positivity movement is negative, is it unhealthy, or anything like that: Absolutely not. There’s not a place for health concerns in a body positivity movement. Yes, there is a conversation to be had about obesity and nutrition and all of these concepts. But you’re missing the point of body positivity. That’s believing that all bodies are good bodies. And that’s deserving love without any qualifiers…All bodies is all bodies; if someone’s unhealthy, that’s their business… and being body positivity is remembering overall health, like mental health. Feeling good about yourself is healthy…In a society where women are constantly judged by their appearance, we don’t need another movement telling us what we need to do to change…We have so many other factors coming at us saying that we need to change, so this is the exception…Health is a very complicated thing and body positivity is not complicated at all.”
Watch here or on our Facebook page.