if you don't know who siena may is she's
a tick talker with
millions of followers and a lot of
people enjoy her having her platform
she encourages loving your body she's
transparent about not looking like an
instagram model in real life
and she posts videos like these where
she deliberately shows off what society
would call
imperfections which i really respect her
for
and a lot of people do respect her for
this i mean
i'm desperately trying to hide a big fat
pimple here so
i wish i had her same confidence i even
see comments from people who
started eating because of her which is
definitely good work on her part
but recently she has been losing weight
and shifting more towards the
conventional desirable body for a female
one that possesses a hourglass figure
and a small
waist a curvy hips and she looks
incredible
i mean she always has but here's a video
that i recently saw from her
[Music]
[Applause]
after reading the comment section there
were largely two types of people
those who were a bit upset or felt iffy
about the video because why were you
calling it bloating
when you clearly weren't bloated it
almost felt like a slap in the face
like ha ha i get to eat five tacos yet
look how flat my stomach has stayed
especially considering how much of her
fan base has grown from focusing on
loving our imperfections then there are
those who are defending siena against
those comments
the general sentiment is it's her body
let her do what she wants why should you
shame her for pursuing a body that makes
her happier and why are you
letting your insecurities tear down
someone else
i think it's important to dive into the
reasons why both sides take the stance
they do
and really it's part of a broader
conflict that
any body positivity icon inevitably
faces
a lot of the time it's the conflict
between wanting to work towards your
ideal body type
which is often the conventionally
attractive figure while
also trying to maintain your support
that
largely rests on you not having that
ideal body type
it's a really difficult position to be
in which is why i think
we as a society shouldn't structure the
body positivity movement around
individuals but more on that later let's
look into the reasoning behind the two
sides in this video
first the unhappy i completely
understand why some people would be put
off by the video
it seems a bit hypocritical for siena to
build a lot of her base
around preaching that it's okay to be
bigger
or to majorly bloat after a meal yet
then post a video where she eats a lot
of food
looks like no different after but still
captions it with
floating it seems almost tone deaf
or would it be image deaf in this sense
anyhow it comes off as though she's
completely unaware
that she wasn't bloated or she knows
that she wasn't bloated and just wants
to show off her body with
a sarcastic caption bloating i'm pretty
sure it's the former since sienna does
genuinely seem
nice and very sincere and trying to
create a positive space
but the video just didn't come off that
way this is where the defenders would
step in and say
look sienna doesn't owe you anything
there was no
contract that you and her sign saying
you must look
this certain way or you are only allowed
to post
these specific types of videos and
besides sienna said herself that she's
not trying to be the face of body
positivity
i never claimed to be the face of body
positivity i never claimed to be
in a specific group or representing a
specific group of people
my account has always been and will
always be
purely just me feeling confident and
hoping that that can inspire
others she's not trying to champion the
message that bigger bodies are better
she preaches confidence loving all
bodies which means
loving your body at every stage in your
life just because she fits the societal
body standards now
more than she did before doesn't mean
that her love for her body has changed
along with physical change
the problem though is that even if there
is no explicit
tangible contract being signed being an
icon for a
movement or just publicly posting a
decent amount of content related to a
certain topic
like sienna has means an implicit
contract
has been developing in fact sometimes
your content could be completely
unrelated to political or social matters
but given the societal context that
you're operating in
you might still end up being a prominent
figure of a movement or an
underrepresented group
i mean think of all the lgbtq plus
actors whose job
is just to act it's not to be a
politician
or an activist and yet because of their
marginalized position
in society anyone who has a major
platform
and shares this marginalized identity
becomes a spokesperson
for this group's important matters i can
talk about a personal example for this
one
so hannah kim is another tick tocker
instagram figure and she's known for
just being
very attractive like girl crush
of the year of the decade and i remember
being very happy that she has monolids
because for so long i felt bad about my
monolids because
asian and western beauty standards as
well
see double eyelids as more beautiful
than monolids
but now here is hannah kim who has
monolids and yet everyone still has
heart eyes for her
but a few months ago she got double
eyelid surgery
and of course i didn't hate her for it
she's obviously not
evil for getting this surgery but deep
down it felt like she was reaffirming
the fact that
double eyelids are better than monolids
and its impacts
hit way bigger because of her big
platform
and because a lot of people already
found her pretty despite or even because
of her monolids
so if she couldn't feel pretty having
monolids
then how could i i think it's the same
idea with sienna
and body positivity icons in general
even the icons who didn't plan
to be icons
in order for body positivity icons to
combat the huge pressure of having a
certain body type
they necessarily have to hyper focus on
the features that are
not conventionally beautiful so when
they produce
content that says it's okay to bloat a
lot
or it's okay to have cellulite we feel
validated by them also having those
features
and we feel like we lose that validation
when they start to lose those
features that they focus on and instead
work towards
a conventionally beautiful body the
message comes off as
oh you should love your body the way it
is
but i'm going to go change mine oh no no
no
it's not because i don't love my body
right now it's just because
i want to be happier but why
does having that body type make you
happier
clearly there's something more desirable
about this body type
than other body types and they
perpetuate that message
by striving for it now are body
positivity icons
evil for wanting to change their bodies
no
it's completely normal for us to want to
look more beautiful
especially when females are constantly
pressured by the media
the historical and societal reasons
behind why
female worth is determined more by their
beauty than male worth and our society
caring
more and more about visuals given the
rise of
tick tock pinterest and instagram and
that's the obstacle
to the love all bodies narrative we are
not blind
we all recognize that there is something
about this body that is more desirable
but i think it only causes more harm for
us to try and force ourselves
to believe that all bodies are equally
desirable
and while we can try to convince
ourselves that siena's message
is to be confident regardless of what
your body looks like
recognize that bodies that don't fit the
pretty mold
are called beautiful at a significantly
disproportionate amount
which i think means that they are
disproportionately justified in being
upset by videos like this
i don't want to say sienna has an
obligation to not change her body
because it's true that that imposes on
her autonomy
but again to be the face of a movement
whether you wanted to be the face of it
or not
requires relatability and consistency
imagine a poor working-class individual
becoming the face of a workers movement
but slowly over time through succeeding
in the game of capitalism
they become wealthy it would feel odd
for us to believe that their content
still retains the same relatability it
once did
one they're not part of the
disenfranchised group anymore
and two they literally bought into the
system that they used to be opposed to
just as how it feels like sienna is
validating
societal beauty standards by striving
for it
even though that's what she wants to
work against
even though this once poor working class
individual in our example
understands what it's like to be poor
because they have been that way in the
past
we want role models or icons to continue
to reflect
the ideas that we have but that's the
downfall of centering movements around
individuals because individuals are
going to
change so of course a leader is going to
let you down sometimes
but it's also very natural for
individual figures to arise from
underrepresented
or under-validated groups because they
want
an individual to comfort them a human
to inspire them so i'll be honest
i don't know how to solve this
it would be great if we could just
abolish beauty standards themselves
so that we wouldn't have this socially
constructed idea
of what it is to be a beautiful female
body
but i'm going to be honest that is just
not
going to happen in fact i think we're
the farthest from that happening than
we've
ever been before i don't know how many
girls i've seen on tick tock get
thousands of likes just for being
conventionally beautiful
we are really starting to value those
who meet these societal standards
i want to end this video by making sure
that everyone knows
i do not hate sienna again
i think she has done a lot of good and
being someone that people
look to for validation is an extremely
huge responsibility to take on
which is why as i said before individual
centric movements
are kind of doomed to fail am i being
stupid
you let me know respond to me or even
call me out for missing some information
i'd love to keep the conversation going
i'm going to create a lot more videos
like this where i talk about
issues or topics that i think are
interesting
important or controversial so subscribe
and like if you want to keep updated and
see what i have next
okay see ya i'm going
i'm going to i'm going to create a lot
more videos
i'm going to create a lot more like
video