Even body positivity goes way too far for me. If it were only adults in play that would be different, but the rise of "body positivity" coincided with a massive increase in child obesity, and there's a strong connection between the eating/health habits of parents and the health outcomes of their children.
body positivity was a very much needed reaction to the mass media starvation-chic obsession of the 2000s. Kate Winslet in Titanic, Jessica Simpson and Britney Spears in the mid 2000s were all widely mocked and panned for being fat whales despite being completely normal looking.
I don't think there is continuity there. Body positivity was a movement of extremely obese people trying to normalize obesity, not a movement of healthy people trying to denormalized anorexia.
The very earliest versions weren't like that. For example, "healthy at every size" was originally "health at every size" - it was supposed to be encouragement that you are succeeding in improving your health by eating better and exercising even if you don't lose weight.
> the rise of "body positivity" coincided with a massive increase in child obesity
The obesity epidemic is yet another instance of “What changed in America in 1971?” that can’t be attributed to body positivity, a movement that didn’t really get nationwide traction until the 90s.
