The progressive standard is clear: Accept your body, unless you identify as transgender.
The progressive standard is clear: Accept your body, unless you identify as transgender.
T he drag performer “Gottmik” is a woman who identifies as a “trans man” and underwent masculinizing medical treatment, later rising to fame as a competitor on the television show RuPaul’s Drag Race. (In simpler terms, she is a woman trying to look like a man who theatrically performs as a woman. Try to keep up.) Gottmik returned to television for the RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars series, and in a recent episode, she strutted down the runway topless. Prosthetic arms, with fake hands holding knives, wrapped around her chest, which had been branded with red rhinestones that formed bloody incision marks where she once had breasts. In one of her actual hands, Gottmik held a see-through plastic bag with fake blood and two ball-like masses representing severed breasts. The competitor wrote on social media, “This look represents the pain and suffering I went through while all at the s[a]me time experiencing complete trans queer liberation in a way that I hope everyone seeing this will feel one day.”
The outfit glamorized self-harm by turning double-mastectomy scars into a fashion statement; her breasts have been reduced to mere accessories removed for drama, style, and a new identity. Perhaps unsurprisingly, progressives applauded Gottmik for heroic “bravery.” People flooded the performer’s social-media posts with approving comments. One user wrote, “For the longest time i felt discouraged to continue drag and present feminine but watching you has inspired me to go forward with my transition and pick up drag again.” Another wrote, “As a pre surgery trans guy i literally teared up when this look came out. you are so inspiring and give me SO much hope to further achieving gender euphoria some day.” Even the Human Rights Campaign offered its endorsement, writing, “Forever obsessed with this.”
Many writers at National Review and elsewhere have noted the social contagion that encourages transitioning, the fierce misogyny that prompts women to attempt “liberation” from their own bodies, or how undergoing gender-related treatment amounts to self-imposed mutilation. But one dimension warrants more inquiry: The progressive enthusiasm for medical intervention to achieve a preferred “gender identity” directly contradicts the militant efforts to promote “body positivity.”
The “body positive” movement, according to an article in Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, is “the idea that all bodies are good bodies.” Broadly speaking, body positivity “promotes acceptance of all bodies” by insisting that “all bodies are beautiful” regardless of appearance. Supposedly, the advocacy for “body inclusivity” fought against the “oppression” that is enforced through the norm of “white, slender, able-bodied cis-women” in media. Feminists have long argued that the fashion industry advances unrealistic beauty standards and encourages unhealthy habits such as eating disorders; critics similarly condemned myriad magazines and brands for being “exclusive” and lacking “diversity.” National campaigns and initiatives — such as “Body Revolution” and the “My Body Gallery” — attempted to disrupt the status quo by showing what real women really look like, as if runway models weren’t really women. The push was so intense that companies underwent major reforms. One frequently cited example is the Victoria’s Secret rebrand, which replaced the lingerie company’s supermodel “Angels” with other women selected for professional achievement, such as soccer star Megan Rapinoe and champion skier Eileen Gu. The rebrand even included a man, the transgender activist Valentina Sampaio.
The activists encourage radical self-acceptance. “There will always be parts of your body which you’re dissatisfied or unhappy with,” writes the self-described “health coach” Sarah King. “Stop obsessing over how your body looks,” she advises readers. “Shift towards appreciating all it does and allows you to do.” (Sounds a bit ableist.)
Paradoxically, the insistence that we ignore bodily appearance is accompanied by women’s emphasizing their larger dress sizes to “challenge” the beauty industry. “Instead of remaining invisible or trying to hide bodies that are defined and seen as deviant, ugly, disgusting or weird, participants in the body positivist community expose their bodies,” writes Anna Johansson, an academic who writes “from the position of being a white, Swedish and fat cis-woman.” Indeed, there was a lot to expose; magazines that previously featured size-zero cover girls instead profiled “curvy” and “plus-size” women. Advocates promote organizations such as the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, which campaigns for “#EqualityAtEverySize” and seeks to “change perceptions of fat and end size discrimination.” The contradiction is obvious: Don’t notice physical appearance, but also, never stop noticing the lack of “representation” and demand more “visibility” for fat people.
Despite the contradictory logic of body-positivity activism, progressives promote self-love (a nifty euphemism for “narcissism”) and repeat the mantra that all bodies are beautiful. “Ugliness is a myth,” these activists tell us. But if all bodies should be embraced, why endorse and applaud surgical mutilation in pursuit of “gender identity”? If developing a positive self-perception is achieved in part by recognizing physical abilities, then why promote the sexual lobotomies and lifelong sexual dysfunction branded as “gender-affirming care”? Surely, accepting one’s body entails resisting procedures to achieve a preferred external appearance. Cultivating a positive bodily self-image is incompatible with celebrating cosmetic surgery (gender-related or otherwise) motivated by self-hate. It is illogical to bemoan that skinny runway models are establishing harmful expectations and then cheer when a woman poses onstage with gem-studded scars that glorify self-harm. The progressive standard is clear: Accept your body, unless you identify as transgender.