- Lizzo recently spoke out against
the body positivity movement
saying that, "It's become too commercialized
and that it doesn't serve all bodies anymore."
The singer said she was looking
to be body normative instead,
but what does that term even mean?
And do positive experts agree
that it's time to reassess the movement?
Lizzo said all of this in an accompanying article,
for her Vogue cover.
In her own words, she is the first big black woman
on the cover of US Vogue.
So it was pretty surprising of her to take a swipe
at the body positivity movement.
She basically argued that body positivity has been co-opted
by brands and appropriated to the point
that it's no longer progressive.
She said that the body positivity hashtag on Instagram
especially had been overrun by smaller framed girls,
curvier girls, and a lot of white women.
And she wanted to move away from it
because it no longer seems inclusive enough.
It's a really interesting discussion about a social movement
that a lot of us take for granted
as basically just being really helpful
for promoting media representation of bigger bodies.
So what are the problems with body positivity
that Lizzo is touching on here?
- It's been hijacked a little bit by forces in capitalism,
so that doesn't help when major advertisers
who kind of made the whole fat activism
necessary to begin with,
start using the word and co-opting the word.
- That's Sarah Harry.
She's the Founder and Director of Body Positive Australia,
as well as a Psychotherapist.
She told me that the body positivity movement,
which began as a feminist activist movement
a few decades ago,
has seen some dramatic changes
in the time that she's been researching it.
Body positivity had a massive explosion on social media
around 2012, with activists, bloggers, authors,
and creatives all contributing some incredible material
to the space.
That's social media success has been incredibly important
and productive for some media representation,
but it's also meant that body positivity
has become entrenched in the advertising industry.
Sarah told me that's made it exclusive and much less useful
because the bigger models are still adhering
to strict beauty standards.
- They tend to be quite beautiful and gorgeous,
but also have some spectacular (laughing)
things in common with the form of ideal beauty
we might see in slim women, for example,
or in that scene largely in society,
which is that they will come in at the waist
and have a beautiful curve.
And you would not see too much cellulite,
which advertisers don't like.
- Body positivity is also an overwhelmingly white movement.
And Sarah said she rarely sees larger women of color
benefiting from it in the same way that Caucasian women do.
She also pointed out that socioeconomic status
has to be a part of body positivity conversations,
Because clean eating
and ultra healthy diets are so expensive,
being slim is easier for people from privileged backgrounds.
- As we see in feminism, as we see in racism,
we also see in body positivity,
there's so much intersectionality here
and we must acknowledge it.
- But what does it mean to be body normative
like Lizzo was talking about?
Sarah told me it's basically just about accepting
that people come in different shapes and sizes.
The definition of a normal body is incredibly broad
and activists want people to recognize that
instead of subscribing to a very basic,
very commercial friendly form of body positivity.
Lizzo said she wants to see girls with back fat,
bellies and overlapping thighs
benefiting from mainstream body image movements again.
The co-opting of body positivity for commercial interests
has changed the movement's success
by just replacing thin ideals with a bigger ideal body.
People are starting to reject that concept
and want to see body positivity returned
to its activist roots by acknowledging the need
for intersectional conversations
about things like race and by representing all bodies,
not just the ones advertisers think look good on posters.
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