Thesis: You must look a certain way to have value. You are not good enough. The only legitimate goal is changing how you look.
Antithesis: You should have no goals or values around how you look. To accept yourself now completely you must resist any desire to change.
Synthesis: Personal autonomy: Whatever you want for yourself, whatever fits your personal values, is what matters. You may simultaneously accept yourself and where you are, and also take actions which cause change.
The original construct of the fitness industry was essentially that you don’t look good enough, and fitness is about fixing that. Then, there was an equal and opposite reaction in certain movements of body positivity, that you should accept yourself completely, and any pursuit of change is betraying that acceptance.
I’d argue for the middle:
1.) What ever you want, you can want. Don’t let people try to give you things to want.
2.) Acceptance and change, paradoxically, work really well together. We now have a ton of evidence (specifically from research into contextual behavioral sciences like ACT and DBT) that acceptance and change are an effective combination.
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