The rise of the body neutrality movement: ‘If you’re fat, you don’t have to hate yourself’

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nstead of emphasising the need to love how you look, concepts such as body neutrality, fat acceptance and body respect are allowing women to make peace with their bodies Anna Kessel Anna Kessel @Anna_Kessel Mon 23 Jul 2018 11.00 BST Last modified on Mon 23 Jul 2018 15.42 BST Shares 5763 Stephanie Yeboah: ‘To be body positive, you have to be acceptably fat – size 16 or less – or white, or very pretty.’ Stephanie Yeboah: ‘To be body positive, you have to be acceptably fat – size 16 or less – or white, or very pretty.’ Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian When Stephanie Yeboah was 12 years old, she was put on a diet and began restricting herself to 300 calories a day. People told her she would be so pretty, if only she could lose weight. By her early 20s, a preoccupation with counting calories had led to a devastating pattern of disordered eating. She was bulimic, but, she says, she did not recognise it because her body shape hadn’t changed and society had made it clear: “Fat people don’t have eating disorders; if they did they wouldn’t be fat.”