Drop the Air-Brushed Models: Body Positivity Is on the Rise & Brands Are Paying Attention

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Latitude

8 min readMar 9, 2020

Let’s face it, air-brushed models and perfectly sculpted influencers just don’t have the same appeal with customers that they used to. The rise of the body positivity movement proves that.

But what does the body positivity movement stand for? It comes from the belief that everyone deserves a positive image of their body regardless of ideals established through societal norms and pop culture. With more and more influencers and their followers creating buzz around the movement through social media and other channels, the fashion and beauty industries are beginning to take notice and act in ways that meet the shifting demands of an increasingly aware market of customers.

So, who are some of the influencers behind the body positivity movement and what are their messages? How are brands contributing (or conforming) to the movement in order to connect with customers? Read on to find out more.

Who Are the Body Positivity Influencers?

Given the success of the movement, body positivity influencers gain more and more followers with each day that passes. Since it strives to affirm acceptance of all bodies and establish realistic ideas of beauty across a wide range of areas — in everything from acne, skin-tone, and nose-shape to body size, disabilities, and “flaws” — the body positivity movement includes a wide range of influencers.

Here’s a sample of a few:

Influencers & Body Size/Shape

One of the most notable body positivity influencers is a plus-size woman of color named Jessamyn Stanley who gained a following of over 401k individuals on Instagram by demonstrating that yoga is for everyone or, to be more specific, “every body.” In an interview with NBC News, Jessamyn remarked that,

Yoga isn’t just for one type of person. Right now it’s only marketed toward thin, white, affluent people. That’s such a small percentage of who exists, and it’s not the group of people who need yoga the most.

Her online yoga studio and app, The UnderBelly Yoga, has over 59k followers on Instagram and has been featured by The New York Times, Teen Vogue, and Yoga Journal among many other publications.

Influencers & Acne

Joining Jessamyn in the body positivity movement is Rocio Cervantes, the Instagram influencer from San Bernardino, California. While Rocio made a name as a makeup artist, fans and followers also know her for being open about her struggle with acne. Feeling frustrated with having to Photoshop acne out of her photos, Rocio stopped touching up her Instagram images altogether. Instead, she embraces her struggle with acne by openly talking about it on social media.

In one of her most-liked Instagram posts, Rocio used her makeup skills to outline several of her facial blemishes with stars. The post received over 48k likes along with the praise and adoration of fans from across the world. In the post, Rocio told fans that she highlighted her blemishes out of frustration and out of the shame she felt for wishing she didn’t have acne. In social spaces dominated by staged photos that strive to portray the perfect image of beauty, Rocio’s honesty offers a welcome glimpse of reality that thousands of followers can relate to.

And, with so many social users proclaiming their support for these body-positive social influencers, brands are increasingly taking notice and making moves to embrace more authentic and realistic images of beauty that customers can relate to.

Here’s a snapshot of a few of these brands and what they’re doing to join the body positivity movement.

How Starface De-Stigmatizes Acne

Like Rocio Cervantes, Starface takes the stigma out of acne by quite literally turning these blemishes into stars. To help customers treat acne and feel confident in their skin, Starface created Hydro-Stars. These hydrocolloid pimple-protectors stick to skin, absorb fluid, and protect blemishes from bacteria while also preventing customers from picking at their skin.

As far as branding goes, Starface nailed it. Try reading their website or social feed without laughing or feeling good about yourself afterward.

How Megababe Confronts an Uncomfortable Reality

If you have skin and are a human, you’re bound to experience chafing at one point or another. But, for some reason, this reality has become a hush hush issue. Megababe aims to change that by getting real about chafing and sweating.

The company offers an array of products that fight everything from chafing thighs and sweaty pits to itchy tush skin and chest perspiration. The brand doesn’t beat around the bush either. Through the directness of its content and its catchy product names, the brand works directly against stigma and assures its customers that there’s nothing wrong with being a woman or a man who occasionally sweats and chafes.

Olay Joins the Movement

In keeping with social media influencers like Rocio Cervantes and Jessamyn Stanley, who prefer to embrace the realities of being a woman rather than covering them up, Procter & Gamble’s skincare label, Olay, recently announced that it would stop retouching all photos in its advertising by 2021. That includes photos posted by social influencers that Olay partners with as well.

The move reflects the company’s desire to appeal to younger shoppers, especially Millennials and Gen-Zers whose values often determine their spending decisions. The move by Olay comes after the company went from being the number eight preferred brand among American teens in the spring of 2019 to not even making the top ten list by the following fall.

According to Olay, the company is following the lead of CVS Pharmacy, which pledged to distinguish between all images that had and hadn’t been visually altered by the end of 2020. In switching to more realistic portrayals of women, Olay hopes to gain some market share back from rival brands like Dove, which has used untouched photos of real women to great success since 2004.

And while the skincare industry changes the way it portrays women, it isn’t alone in doing so. Certain brands in the fashion and garment industry, like Aerie, Target, and ModCloth are following suit.

Aerie, Target, & ModCloth: Cultivating Body-Positivity in the Garment Industry

These three brands understand that the majority of their customers aren’t pencil-thin white women. As a result of this reckoning, each brand is taking real steps to portray their models accordingly.

Modcloth, for instance, not only offers a variety of sizes from straight to plus, but it also displays most garments on its website with both straight and plus-size models. This double portrayal allows more customers to have a better idea of how a single garment might look on them. These portrayals also paint ModCloth in a positive light by showing that the brand is in touch with modern preferences, changing norms, and the voices of its customers.

Like ModCloth, Aerie doesn’t hesitate to use models of all shapes and body types either. Aerie’s ads and visuals constantly feature an ethnically diverse range of models with an even larger range of body types. Rather than covering or editing out blemishes, wrinkles, lines, and cellulite, Aerie readily features models with these traits, and fans love the brand for it. And that transparency and authenticity might just be enough to draw fans away from brands like Victoria’s Secret to more relatable brands like Aerie.

According to Euromonitor, the market share enjoyed by Victoria’s Secret fell by 2% to 28.8% over a five year period that ended in 2017. At the same time, Aerie posted a 0.4% gain, giving the brand a 2.3% share in the lingerie market.

Like Aerie, Target also features models of all shapes, sizes, and skin tones. The retail giant first began doing so back in 2016 with their #NoFOMO swimwear ad campaign, which prompted shoppers to “embrace their confident and fearless selves.” Again, following in Aerie’s steps, Target also refrains from using Photoshop to alter or touch up images of their swimsuit models. What you see is what you get. According to a PR release made earlier by the company, Target wants to, ‘take the stress out of swimsuit season and, instead, put the joy back in it.’ Thanks to their portrayal of “real” women, they’re helping to do just that.

The Takeaway:

So, how can other brands participate in the body positivity movement and appeal to a wider range of customers in an era of changing norms and expectations? Take the following steps:

Empower Creators — creating authentic and “real” content from brand-owned sources often proves difficult. Elevate organic voices. Find and partner with influencers who have cultivated authentic images and who have followers that would naturally be interested in your products.
Find Your Place — How does your product or service organically fit into the body positivity movement? Look for ways you can bring the larger ideas behind the body positivity movement — like self-acceptance and value for diversity — into your brand’s identity, content, etc.
Embrace Imperfection — From un-Photoshopped photos to varied sizes of clothing, how can standard marketing practices bend and flex to meet the body positivity mindset? What old norms around beauty can you dispense with in order to connect with an increasingly aware audience? Where can you take the lead?

Want to learn more? Feel free to reach out at any time. We would love to chat!

The above piece was written by the Latitude Supercharge Research Team, which includes Connor Beck and Carter Jensen

Supporting Resources —

Resources and original reporting of the above points covered by the following publications — Style Caster, NBC News, Forbes, Teen Vogue, Megababe, Starface, ModCloth, GOOD, & GLAMOUR

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