The Death of Body Positivity

Originally published in Rogue Zine and Growing Strong.

Like most social movements, it was bound to be watered down to appeal to the mainstream, but I don’t think anyone expected body positivity to lose this many teeth in what feels like such a short amount of time.

A movement that was founded by fat (above a US size 16) women, a movement driven by the efforts of countless women of colour, a movement that encouraged radical self-love and challenged existing beauty standards, has become completely whitewashed.

i-D recently published a list of the ‘new generation of body positive pioneers’, and the majority of women listed are below the average US dress size, and fair skinned. The one woman listed who would actually be considered fat is Tess Holliday — she’s become the token fat woman for mainstream body positive advocates. No longer are fat women the focus of body positivity; instead, we get just the one representative, and fat women of colour get no representation whatsoever.

I don’t blame these women personally for their becoming role models — it was inevitable. In a society that values thinness, conventional beauty, and fair skin, movements that don’t actively and continuously seek to challenge those standards are bound to fall into the trap of privileging those with ideal bodies above those without. The women that have now become the most prominent representatives of body positivity have bodies that may deviate from the norm in one way, but rarely in multiple ways — they’re either bigger than a size 2…