Who Can and Cannot Be Body Positive.

Each day I pick up my phone, I suffer through the internal battle of whether or not I should delete my Twitter. Some days, the app is filled with heartfelt videos of a father playing "Isn't She Lovely" on the saxophone to a field of grazing cows, or tweets from hilarious drunk girls giving weather forecasts. However, others are filled with angry, hateful messages to attack fellow tweet-ers. Ever since the 2016 election, the app has become polarized, causing the culture to shift from memes to continues attempts to "cancel" each other. While many of these social justice warriors have good intentions, the flaring tempers often lead to more destructive battles, obliterating the initial pursuit of justice.

A few weeks ago, I came across a tweet that stated,

"@babyybry: I work my ass off at the gym for my body, so if I post a pic captioned "body positive" I honestly don't care if I offend anyone lol"

While this tweet falsely assumes you need to have a body you worked for in order to join the Body Positive movement, the tweets under this were just as bad. An outraged user replied,

"@stephslays: Lmao sis no one's offended by your body that you "work your ass off at the gym for". By using the term "body posi" as a caption it's robbing a caption made for others to feel positive about their bodies when society has told them not to."

—Wrong, again. Mind you, each tweet grossed over 1,000 likes each. The Body Positive movement is a social media, as well as print media, campaign to encourage women to think positively about their bodies while embracing their unique features, straying away from perpetual thoughts oriented around fitting a certain body convention. At its core, the movement is something beautiful that all women should get behind. However, when a social movement intersects with this new cancelation twitter culture, things get warped. Here, both women are in the wrong—you don't have to be someone who works out to embrace your body. You also don't have to be someone who has a body that society would look upon fondly. Body Positivity is an umbrella term for all bodies. If we go around dictating who can and cannot use this phrase, we are created new bodily conventions that we attempted to dismantle in the first place.

All in all, Twitter culture and the conversation on women's bodies as a whole needs to be put in check. Whether it's individuals embracing curvy women and putting down skinny women, or fit women criticizing society for praising "obesity" and "encouraging unhealthy habits", it all needs to stop. Skinny women can have body image issues, fit women can have body image issues, overweight women can have body image issues—we all do because we cannot stop arguing over who is allowed to feel what about their bodies.