Body Positivity

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I have a bit of an unusual take on body positivity. I love my body.

I love my body. But I'm more or less neutral on my physical appearance. On the whole, I feel vaguely positive about it, but only very weakly so. There are a few features I quite like. Mostly I don't give it a lot of thought.

But I love my body. I love biking 30 miles to give people cookies, or 100 miles to see my partner. I love that I can bench 100 pounds or squat 200. At a simpler level, I love the feeling of warming up on a cold day, or stepping into air conditioning on a hot day.

I love the feeling of my partners' hands touching me, and I love being able to use my body to make other people happy. I love tasting a fresh berry that I just picked, or smelling bread that I made with my own hands. 

I love my body because of the things that it can do. How it looks is something for other people. Enough people seem happy with that, but it's not my big concern. What I care about is all the things it does for me. It gives me so many amazing experiences, and there are so many things it can do.

And sure, I wish my wrists, shoulders, and hips weren't chronically grumpy. I wish I didn't have to manage my iron levels really carefully so I don't go into thalassemia crash. I wish I wasn't so sensitive to sensations that wearing masks is still seriously uncomfortable, even after two years of having to do it all the time.

But really, those are small things. As I get older, more of them will accumulate, and some of the things on my list will become harder or impossible. But even so, I know that it will continue to do so many amazing things. And that will have to be enough. 

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