"RAVE BODY", TOXIC OR NAH?

Art by SaraShakeel (go check her out she’s awesome)

Body image has been on my mind over the past few days as I think it is for most people around this type of year. We all know that the minute the clock strikes twelve, and we run into the new year with fireworks and celebration that almost immediately after comes the dreaded season of the ‘New Years resolution that you are 900% not going to keep up with.” For a lot of people, New Year's resolutions often have to do with health and more specifically (and sometimes toxically) weight. I don’t think there is anyone alive who hasn’t gone into the new year with the goal to lose ‘x’ amount of pounds and keep the weight off, but I wanted to take a second to talk a little bit about this idea of a ‘rave body.‘ Now, if you have been reading ANY of the content on this blog, you should have realized that I am all about promoting diversity of race and body type in the rave and festival fashion community. As someone who has struggled with both body dysmorphia and eating disorders it can often be difficult to navigate a social media space where extreme unattainable (for some of us) body types are promoted as being the ‘ideal.’

Not long after I discovered raving and festivals, I stumbled across the concept of ‘rave body’ or ‘getting the perfect rave body’ just in time for festival season. Now, it should go without saying that there is nothing wrong with wanting to be fitter or feel better about yourself, but I know from first hand how quickly interest in being ‘healthy’ can turn into something toxic. I found videos about how to get the perfect ‘rave body’, posts talking about how there were only x-amount of weeks to get your ‘rave body’ for EDC or other festivals, and it wasn’t long before I started to wonder how many other girls (and guys! because men can have body image problems and eating disordered too) were seeing these and then thinking that the body that they had wasn’t good enough.

“Rave Body” should be an “Any Body.” Your body is a rave body the second you put on your glitter and set through the festival gates. You don’t need to do nine million squats or a billion hours of cardio to conform to some silly idea of what a ‘rave body’ is. The only thing that matters is that you can dance for as long and as hard as you want to at your favorite DJ’s set. You don’t need to crash diet to look skinny in photos; you don’t need to alter your routine, because if you are YOUR healthy, then you are precisely the way that you need to be.

I feel like as positive as we are as a community there are still some norms that can leave people with body image issues feeling lesser than. It is important to keep in mind that something that might seem harmless can have a huge effect on the self-esteem of the people around you. As a community we should aspire to lift one another up for the things that make us unique not promote one particular form as being ‘perfection’ and thus saying by omission than anything else is lesser than.

Now I promise I will get off my high horse in like 2.5 seconds, but I just wanted to end on one particular point. Raving should be about loving yourself and feeling good in the skin your in. You may see a specific thing as beautiful but just remember that we don’t live in a vacuum when you post something about ‘body goal's’ or having ‘a perfect rave body’ your words and images will affect others. What may seem harmless to you could be negatively impacting the people that you love and others around you. I know I keep saying it, but at the end of the day, we should be trying to lift one another up and celebrate our differences.

So, next time you start questioning if you have a ‘perfect rave body,’ just remember that you are beautiful the way you are and that you don’t need to force yourself into anyone’s mold.