Is body positivity out of fashion?
On Tuesday, singer Ariana Grande spoke out on TikTok against commenting on other people’s bodies and physical appearances. “We should be kinder and less comfortable commenting on people’s bodies, no matter what,” said the singer. She added “there are ways of praising someone or ignoring something you see and don’t like that I think we should help each other work on. Just to aim to be safer and keep each other safer.”
“There are so many different ways to look healthy and beautiful,” Grande said as well.
However, while Ariana Grande and other singers like Lizzo and Meghan Trainor trumpet body positivity, has society really moved closer to embracing new beauty norms in recent years?
At this spring’s Paris Fashion Week, ultra-thin models made a huge comeback, according to multiple media reports. fashion business found that in recent shows in New York, London, Milan and Paris, 95.6% of the looks were presented by so-called straight models, which correspond to US size 0-4. The average size for an American woman is currently between 16 and 18 years old.
Whatever happened to the concept of body positivity, which promotes acceptance of all body types?
Size inclusion seemed to be part of fashion designers’ concepts in years past, with plus-size models celebrating new looks on the runway. Jean-Paul Gautier, for example, promoted his perfume La Belle Fleur Terrible with model and DJ Barbara Butch, a lesbian activist who campaigns for fat acceptance.
How it all started with body positivity
Body positivity is often perceived as a recent social media phenomenon. However, the movement is much older and has its roots in the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s in the United States, according to cultural scientist Elisabeth Lechner, author of a German-language book on the topic “Riot, don’t diet !”.
Resisting conventional beauty ideals was a problem in feminist circles. People gathered in New York City in 1967 for protests, eating cake and banning diet guides. Activists had political concerns: “It wasn’t about loving yourself 24/7; it was about demanding fair treatment for people with fat bodies, no matter who they were,” Lechner told DW.
They made concrete political demands, such as “not being mistreated in the hospital because everything is the weight’s fault, which can lead to fatal consequences. Or not being discriminated against in insurance, in the job market or housing, in dating, in all areas of life” , added Lechner. “It was really a structural critique and not about this easily marketable self-love.”
Advertisers prefer standard bodies
Inclusion activists see the prevalence of size 0 models on US and European runways as a backlash against body positivity.
Elisabeth Lechner believes that social media is also to blame, as it prioritizes profit over political resistance. “Platform capitalism demands the same standard bodies to sell advertising products. It’s a completely unregulated market,” she said, which is why she also finds it problematic to use social media to resist trends promoted by these “deeply capitalist” platforms.
As renowned body positive activist Lizzo has also pointed out, there is a lack of diversity among those claiming to promote inclusivity, as the majority of so-called body positivity influencers continue to be relatively thin white women, while people of color and men are under-represented.
If there’s still a lot to improve, the fact that body positivity activists like Lizzo are world stars is still an indication of progress. As Lechner noted, when she was growing up, role models simply didn’t exist for other body types.
Source: DW
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