Here's the truth: if you want to feel good about yourself, do something good. The only issue with that simple directive is it requires both action and accountability. It's far easier to sit, point and whine than it is to get off one's fat, giggling hindquarters and do something meaningful. This eschewing of personal responsibility is exemplified in the fat pride body positivity movement, which has bellyflopped onto the cultural scene with all the grace of Tess Holliday performing Swan Lake. On ice. We are constantly bullied to celebrate the least accomplished among us, especially the fat pride land-dwelling butterwhales, whose only accomplishment is failing to trigger a response from the Richter scale.

Like everyone else, if members of the body positivity movement want to be positive about their bodies, they need to do something positive. With their bodies. Which doesn't include treating one's stomach like a landfill. Sorry.

Before someone flexes their fingers in preparation to hate type about how they're struggling to be thinner and eat healthily, please spare me. I'm specifically addressing the fat pride body positivity movement's most gluttonous members who demand I celebrate their fatness as "beautiful" while I take daily action to ensure I don't balloon into my own planet. So if you're overweight, know it, and are taking action to do something, not demanding the rest of us praise you for your bravery in being overweight, then rest easy. This post isn't for you.

But if your body is roughly equal to the landmass of Australia, and you demand you're beautiful just the way you are, then label anyone who disagrees with your assessment as hateful, no. You're not beautiful nor are you healthy. It is not up to me or anyone else to validate you or your delusion. Just as it's not up to me or anyone else to validate a transgender person's delusion.

Beauty is not for everyone. You are not beautiful just because you want to be, just like a man isn't a woman just because he wants to be.

Unlike beauty standards or sex, real pride can be based on actions, actions which result in accomplishments. Accomplishments which then result in net positives in your personal life. Net positives resulting in something you may be proud of.

Generally speaking, a fat body is not a positive for all the reasons we've discussed ad nauseam: a fat body is very likely causing great medical harm, and based on how fat pride members demand everyone else validate them, it's also causing emotional harm.

The only people who demand others reaffirm their worth are those who feel worthless.

People who want to feel "positive" and "proud" need to stop demanding everyone do something for them (like tell them they're perfect/beautiful just the way they are) and accomplish something for themselves. It requires no effort to eat whatever you want and fill out lounge pants. Or in many cases, spill over lounge pants.

A body worth celebrating is one that can do something more than transform food into the rolls of your muffin top. Bodacious as it may be. A body worth celebrating is one that is special. Where "special" is not average. Just as a genius has a mind worth celebrating, so does an athlete have a body worth celebrating.

Heck, you don't even need to be an athlete. But you should be able to do more than exchange a table of food for cellulite.

If you're struggling to find pride in your fatness, it's because your fatness is nothing to be proud of. Seems simple enough, but we're no longer living in obvious times.

Most of us could easily be fat if we just stopped trying not to be. You will never find self-worth or pride in puddles of fat rolls. But you will find pride once you can pull your chin over a bar. Chin singular. You will be proud when you can squat your bodyweight. You will feel good about yourself when you can scale a flight of stairs without needing a medic once you reach the top.

You will never find pride through outside validation. Which is likely why fat pride bullies continue to insist everyone validate their worth: because no amount of outside validation is giving it to them. And like food, they're demanding more.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to be proud of the body you have. But if what you want is to love your body, why not show it some love first and treat it better than a garbage truck.

~Written by Courtney Kirchoff