My husband wanted to start a mature-themed discord for people over 40 that has a heavy emphasis on body positivity. I'm a mod there, to have a male/female moderation team. It's been going well for a while but we just had a dust up over a female member who never, ever posted pictures of her face that weren't heavily - as in anti-aging - filtered. He and I saw her real picture when she verified her age to be let in. Her filtered pics look nothing like her.

I won't get into the drama here, but I want to sanity check my thoughts so that he and I can have a reasoned discussion. We clearly need to better define our "body positive" stance. I do see it as being accepting of any shapes/sizes/genders/ages/whatever. What we neglected to define was the concept of authenticity. Is using anti-aging filters seen as inauthentic? Either yes or no, is it still "body positive"? I see it as being inauthentic, basically hiding behind the filter because you don't like the way you look which is not body positive. I could be wrong, though, and am willing to be educated. Please chime in!

Edited to add: Good point all of you who are saying that body neutrality is a better term. I can suggest we switch to using that terminology.

I also want to add that I do have empathy with wanting to show yourself in the best light. I HATE pictures of my face. Part of why I wanted to talk about this here is that I think we kind of also need to define a line: where does a little polish end and complete deception start? For the purposes of defining server rules used for moderation, I think we should outline that. And it must also be fair, but clear. We're not against making yourself a bit prettier. But making yourself look 25 years younger and like a plastic avatar? Not so much. But how to put that in words....?