The body image trend that sounds reasonable but miss the mark in a big way.
Key Takeaways
- Body neutrality is defined as “tolerating your body” and falls short at helping people achieve well-being
- Body appreciation and protective filtering are crucial for preventing disordered eating
- Neutrality bypasses the multifaceted components that create genuine body peace
- Research indicates we need positive engagement with our bodies, not detachment or tolerance
- Social media’s usurping of body neutrality borrows from positive body image, such as appreciating what the body can do
Body neutrality is having a moment. “You don’t have to love your body, just be neutral about it!” sounds refreshingly achievable after years of being in a hate-hate relationship with yourself.
But body image scientists say it’s not the savior people believe it to be.
If ditching diet culture and building a positive relationship with food is your goal, body neutrality doesn’t do a good job at helping you achieve this. And misinformation about what positive body image (often called “body positivity”) is and how to achieve it keeps people from genuinely healing their body image.
Let us walk you through what the evidence actually says, and why the “just be neutral” approach might be keeping you stuck.
What Body Neutrality Gets Wrong About the Research
Body neutrality advocates suggest we should aim for body appreciation, emphasizing what it can do over what it looks like. they say. “You don’t have to love the way you look,” they say. “Neutral is enough.”
While it sounds reasonable, comprehensive research by Tracy Tylka and Nichole Wood-Barcalow (2015) shows that encouraging neutrality is really advocating for indifference.
Body neutrality is defined in the literature as “tolerating your body.” You wouldn’t tell a friend they should tolerate their romantic relationship or tolerate indifference from your boss, so why would we encourage it as a society about the most important relationship, the one you have with yourself?
The Spectrum of Body Image… doesn’t exist?
The evidence shows that this gets in the way of helping people move closer to positive body image, which is the ultimate goal because it increases overall well-being, life satisfaction, health behavior adoption, and associated with traits like self-esteem, optimism, and resilience.
“Body neutrality is often presented as a new, realistic alternative to body positivity, but we find significant overlap between the concepts. Many features attributed to body neutrality have long been part of the scientific understanding of positive body image,” says Tylka and Wood-Barcalow. “Emphasizing appreciating and respecting the body for what it can do (body functionality) and accepting the body even when not liking its appearance are hallmarks of positive body image.”
So you might be closer to positive body image than you think?
“I believe the confusion is essentially a linguistic one, in that positive body image logically sounds like the opposite of negative body image (when it is not) and body neutrality sounds like the middle of the two (when it is not).”
In other words, it’s common to think that positive and negative body image live on the same spectrum, but this isn’t the case.
As Tylka and Wood-Barcalow outline in their paper, positive and negative body image are two different constructs. This means you can have both positive and negative body image!
Active Appreciation (Not Indifference)
The research consistently shows that body appreciation (actively valuing your body) predicts better psychological wellbeing, intuitive eating, and self-care behaviors. This isn’t passive acceptance. It’s active gratitude for what your body does and represents.
People with positive body image actively appreciate their bodies’ functionality AND appearance in a balanced, healthy way.
Protective Filtering (Not Avoidance)
Here’s where body neutrality really misses the mark. Research shows people with positive body image have a “protective filter” that actively accepts positive information and rejects harmful messages.
Neutrality doesn’t do a good job at helping with this because it doesn’t promote accepting positive information. But the evidence shows we need to actively filter and process body-related information, not pretend it doesn’t exist or that it’s all neutral.
Broadly Conceptualizing Beauty (Not Ignoring Appearance)
This is where people miss the mark and why they might lean on feeling neutral about their bodies. They say, “I don’t love my appearance but I can feel neutral about it” may be a signal they haven’t done the body image work to challenge their body image beliefs.
Part of building a better body image is by challenging and changing what we find as attractive and unattractive. Part of this process is done through expanding and broadening what we conceptualize as beautiful.
This doesn’t mean “everyone is beautiful”; it means appreciating and valuing a wide variety of appearances, rather than only what is typically put on a pedestal in culture and the media.
It involves seeing beauty in oneself and others that isn’t limited to external appearance but also includes internal qualities, individuality, and authenticity.
People with a broad conceptualization of beauty are less likely to judge themselves or others strictly by conventional beauty ideals and are more likely to feel comfortable in their own skin.
Where body neutrality’s efforts lie in “neutralizing” information, positive body image encourages you to expand beyond appearance and begin viewing people, including yourself, as a whole person.
The Problem with “Just Don’t Think About It”
Body neutrality essentially asks you to opt out of body positivity. Yet studies show that positive body image actively protects against:
- Disordered eating thoughts, feelings and behaviors like diet cycling and food guilt
- Body dissatisfaction during appearance threats like someone commenting on your body
- Negative impacts of media exposure
- Depression and anxiety
- Avoidance from looking in the mirror, taking photos, and socializing
This protection doesn’t come from neutrality. It comes from a well-formed, well-rounded positive body image.
When Halliwell (2013) showed women pictures of very thin models from the media, women who felt appreciated and cared for their bodies didn’t just ignore the differences between themselves and the models. Instead, they consciously decided that those differences didn’t matter much to them. This isn’t just feeling neutral or indifferent; these women were actively protecting their self-esteem by reminding themselves that looking different from the models isn’t a bad thing or an important thing to worry about.
Why Function-Only Focus Falls Short
Body neutrality often promotes focusing solely on what your body can do. “Appreciate what your body can do, not how it looks!”
But the research shows something more nuanced. People with genuine positive body image:
- Appreciate BOTH function and appearance
- View their bodies holistically (valuing physical, emotional, and functional aspects together)
- Connect body image to identity and values
- Experience their bodies as part of their whole selves (understanding the body as interconnected with your thoughts, emotions, and values)
The function-only approach fragments something that research shows should be integrated.
At Hard House, we see this play out constantly. Clients who try to be “neutral” often end up suppressing important feelings that need processing, not avoiding.
What Actually Works (According to Science)
Research has tested specific interventions. Here’s what creates genuine positive body image:
Self-Compassion (Not Detachment)
Self-compassion extends beyond “just be kind to yourself.” It’s learning how to hear yourself out when you’re have a negative body image moment and making the best decisions to support yourself.
What lack of compassion looks like:
- Negative self-talk: “I can’t believe I look like this. I hate my body. Why can’t I just look like I’m fit and healthy?”
- Shame and Criticism: “I shouldn’t feel this way. I need to get control back. I’m going to start a new fitness program on Monday and change this.” (Coping with negative feelings by taking action in order to change the body.)
What compassion looks like:
- Mindful Awareness: “I see that I’m judging my appearance again, and that’s a difficult feeling. It’s hard when I’m being hard on myself.”
- Supportive Action: “What would decision would I make it I wasn’t feeling this way, and I felt good instead? I’d go for my run that I already scheduled this afternoon and then meet up with my friends for dinner as planned. I’m going to wear clothes that fit well so I don’t think about how uncomfortable I’m feeling all night.”
Cognitive Dissonance Work
Changing the way you think about yourself (physical, emotional, intellectual, social) requires engagement with the negative thoughts, not neutrality.
Before (Typical/Unhelpful Context):
- Scenario: You feel a rush of negative thoughts when you see your reflection. “I look terrible today. I’m always so out of shape. Why try to feel good about my body?”
- Avoidance/Neutral Approach: You try to numb or distract yourself (“It doesn’t matter,” or “I just won’t think about it”), but the thoughts linger and affect your mood and actions.
After (Engage and Challenge Dissonance-Based Work):
- Active Engagement: Instead of avoiding the thought, you deliberately bring it to awareness and challenge its validity.
- Concrete Example:
- Noticing – You become aware of the automatic negative thought: “I’m unattractive.”
- Countering with an Intentionally Contradictory Statement or Action – You write or say aloud, “My appearance and fitness doesn’t tell the whole story about me. I wouldn’t be more valued if I was suddenly in shape today.”
- Dissonance Activity – You make it a point to continue on with your plans business as usual, even if the thoughts hover in the background. You use the mantra, “If I’m anxious about my appearance today, then I’ll go about my day, even if it’s anxiously.”
- Result – The discomfort (dissonance between belief and action) actually helps reduce the power of the old negative belief over time. You realize you can empower yourself by acting against the old thoughts by not allowing them to dictate your behaviors.
Body Acceptance From Others
Perceiving body acceptance from others helps positive body image. Cultivating a social circle where you feel included and accepted as a whole person can do a lot for how we feel about ourselves. You can practice accepting compliments from others, both appearance and non-appearance related.
If you have a social circle largely focused on appearance, like obtaining “a gym look” and spending most of the time talking about health and fitness, this can have downsides. Healthy investment in appearance is encouraged, but overemphasis on striving towards an ideal can interfere with positive body image development.
The Real Path Forward
Look, we get why body neutrality appeals. After years of being told to love every inch of yourself, “just be neutral” feels like relief.
But the research is clear: positive body image isn’t about loving inch of yourself; it’s about accepting and respecting your body, even with its imperfections. It’s normalizing that body image ebbs and flows from day to day for reasons (like your environment, mood, energy levels, stress levels, coping mechanisms, mental load, exposure to messaging, etc.) that don’t even have to do with your body.
Faking positivity is not part of the positive body image handbook, neither is it about never wanting to change anything about your appearance.
The goal is to develop healthy (adaptive) appearance investment and reducing unhealthy (maladaptive) investment.
In Summary
It’s easier to sell you body neutrality than it is to help you believe that everyone, including you, is capable of developing a positive body image. In fact, body neutrality is centered around settling, and we (low key) believe it’s a lazier approach.
But if you’re serious about developing a genuinely healthy relationship with your body, then the answer is actively engaging in body image work. That’s exactly the kind of work we include in the type of coaching we do at Hard House. Let’s talk about what that could look like for you.
