Sixtine Rouyre Gets Candid About the Difference Between Body Neutrality and Body Positivity

Sixtine Rouyre was photographed by Yu Tsai in Dominica.Yu Tsai/Sports Illustrated

Social media influencer and model Sixtine Rouyre has appeared in campaigns for Target, Warby Parker, Ulta, SKIMS and Aerie, and this spring, she will make her debut in the 2023 SI Swimsuit Issue.

A self-proclaimed body neutrality advocate, Rouyre is a model and social media influencer who uses her platform to inspire other women to love their bodies regardless of their shape or size.

Rouyre recently traveled to Dominica, where she posed for her rookie photo shoot with photographer Yu Tsai. It was there that Rouyre, 25, opened up about her role as a content creator and why she prefers to refer to herself as a body neutrality advocate rather than a body positivity one.

The downsides to the body positivity movement

For starters, Rouyre states that the body positivity movement can tend to draw attention away from other body-conscious causes.

“I feel like lately, while there are so many great parts about the body positivity movement. … It kind of got a little bit oversaturated [and] started taking away from the fat-positive movement,” she shares.

Rouyre notes that some body positive influencers on social media feel inauthentic to her, and since she’s not a plus-sized woman herself, she doesn’t feel comfortable focusing her platform around body positivity.

“A lot of body positive influencers are still size 0, and it’s like, ‘O.K. babe, you can talk about loving your rolls, but you also don’t have any.’ And I realized too, as someone who’s a size 10, I still am not plus-sized, I am still not discriminated against in society the way that actual plus-sized people are, so it's not my place to speak on it,” she says.

Rouyre empathizes with women who don’t necessarily love every single aspect of their bodies, and instead of adopting an over-optimistic disposition regarding her own, she prefers to acknowledge and accept her flaws.

“As a woman, I do understand what it’s like to hate your body, as every woman I imagine feels like [at some point] and this pressure to be a certain size and look a certain way and have a flat stomach, but still have hips and and ass, … It’s insane what we are asked to do [with] our bodies,” she shares.

Rouyre notes that the concept of body positivity requires people to “walk around loving our bodies at all hours of the day,” which can be mentally exhausting. She adds that terms like “tiger stripes” that affectionately refer to stretch marks are an example of this form of toxic positivity.

“All these things, again, take away from the fat-positive movement, and you almost [feel] this guilt because you don’t love yourself enough,” she says.

Body neutrality allows Rouyre to respect her form as it is

Rather than creating a false sense of positivity regarding every aspect of her physical appearance, Rouyre embraces body neutrality, a concept that she says allows her to focus on how her body functions, rather than how it looks.

“I discovered body neutrality, which is basically, instead of focusing on loving my stretch marks, I can appreciate the fact that my stretch marks are there because I am growing. I’m a growing person, I don’t stay tiny forever,” she says. “Or mothers who have stretch marks—your body created an entire human. That is insane, of course [your body has] stretched, like that makes sense, you know? And so we don't have to love them, we can just acknowledge that our bodies are there.”

Ultimately, Rouyre’s interpretation of body neutrality comes down to focusing on what our bodies help us do and simply accepting them as they are.

“Our bodies are not there to look a certain way or be aesthetic, they’re there to provide for us and allow us to live our lives,” she says. “It allows me to swim, it allows me to travel, it allows me to come on all these adventures and do things. It allows me to live in New York City, where it’s a lot of walking and a lot of steps and a lot of like carrying your groceries all by yourself with just your hands.”

Rouyre says the mindset of body neutrality helps her embrace herself just as she is while prioritizing the functionality of her body over its aesthetics.

“I do love my body and I love my curves and I’ve come to appreciate all these things, but I don’t have to appreciate those specific aesthetic things in order to just appreciate my body for what it allows me to do,” she says. “I really found a safe space in body neutrality in that I can separate my worth and myself from my body because at the end of the day, it is just a vessel that’s allowing me to live the life I want to.”

Meet Sixtine Rouyre—read the 2023 SI Swimsuit rookie’s full feature profile here.