PLUS AND MINUS

Why is #bodypositivity failing us?

It took a green velour tracksuit to reinforce what many have known all along: that we are not body positive. In the UK this month, political commentator Isabel Oakeshott was widely criticised when she posted a photo of a high street mannequin dressed in a tracksuit.

‘‘This, in a Regent St fitness store, is what obesity looks like. Flabby curves highlighted in hideous lime green velour. The so-called ‘body positivity’ movement is not ‘inclusive’, it’s dangerous,’’ she wrote to widespread outrage. The mannequin’s frame looked to be averagesized, even muscular.

Despite the visibility of #bodypositive, designers and stores claiming they’re making larger sizes, and the appearance of different body shapes in marketing material, a straw poll of friends reveals that just as much as ever, our bodies are still not good enough for us. (One thin friend has a story to tell about buying underwear. ‘‘I was a large! It’s like I’m being gaslit.’’)

Millennial and Gen Xers grew up making do with dial-up internet or social media, their analogue connection to the outside world teen magazines and tabloids. The latter splashed images of female celebrities in bikinis, either hailing their perfect body achieved through a steady regime of diet and exercise, or zooming in on their cellulite, or weight gain, declaring them in crisis.

Thesis researcher Portia Campbell was growing up around this time, and remembers those glossies. ‘‘The media was very vocal about how women should look,’’ she says over Zoom. ‘‘It was the Kate Moss heroin chic era, women’s magazines encouraged you to lose 30 kilos to fit into your bikini on page one, and then your chocolate cake recipe on page two.’’

In 2021 Campbell began studying how women responded to images on Instagram tagged #bodypositive, the hashtag which has been co-opted from historic black and fat acceptance movements that took off in the 80s. The catch-cry was inherently political, but now you’re just as likely to see a picture of a traditionally beautiful

looking woman with the odd blemish. Campbell found that despite social media purporting to give us a wider lens of different body shapes, folk don’t actually feel that positive about them, or themselves.

Campbell specifically spoke to 11 Millennial women, that unique bunch who grew up on the cusp of the social media revolution but were largely exposed to traditional media during those ‘‘heteronormative, white, thin narratives’’ and who are also young enough to probably spend a lot of time on social media. She wondered if the juxtaposition had an impact – the results were striking.

‘‘Cognitively, all of my participants know that they appreciate seeing a diverse range of bodies on Instagram, however that doesn’t necessarily change how they feel about themselves. It’s almost like, a set of rules for them, and a set of rules for me. [They think], ‘It’s great they’re showing that, but I wouldn’t be brave enough to show my face with acne and no makeup. It’s great that she feels comfortable in that bikini, but there is no way that I would do that.’

‘‘Which is interesting, because I think that suggests that we potentially haven’t moved as forward as we would have liked.’’

‘‘Iwould definitely say beauty standards have not disappeared,’’ says author and host of Bod Almighty podcast, Hannah Tunnicliffe. ‘‘They have just adapted.’’ Spend enough time on Instagram, and you’ll note no matter how many weights you lift, runs you smash, or high intensity workouts you sweat through, you’ll never feel Instagram-worthy. The elusive thigh gap has been replaced with a peachy butt; the waif thin body is now the fitspo

package fuelled by a kale smoothie and gratitude journal. Thin has become strong – pair your Lululemon with some barbells and a sneaky mirror selfie with a wellness hashtag, and you’ll fit right in. It’s all tinged with a hint of white privilege and faux soul-searching.

Says Tunnicliffe: ‘‘There’s a really strong moral undertone to the wellness movement industry. The clean eating thing drives me mental. What, are you eating out of a garbage can? It reinforces the idea that our bodies are gross and dirty, and if left to our own devices it would be like Lord of the Flies .A lot of that stuff is simmering under the surface... It’s shamegenerating. [People] look at these images and they feel like s... and they don’t know why.’’

Tunnicliffe points out that people with poor body image and those who develop eating disorders follow a complex route, and we can’t blame just one thing: not our mothers who refused desserts or never wanted to be in photos, not our social media feed with its Les Mills trainers, nor celebrity culture or magazines.

Tunnicliffe, 42, spent two decades grappling with eating disorders, including bulimia, and relays the exhaustion, even of recovery.

‘‘One night I was really upset and said to my husband, ‘I can’t believe there’s not a better version of life, I can’t believe this is it. I just have to carry this around in my head all the time’. Even though you’re not restricting or whatever behaviour gets you diagnosed, you still carry that stuff around in your head, it keeps you up at night.’’

She took an online course by Isabel Foxen Duke, about halting your fight with food, and learned about how to not be constantly thinking about eating, worrying and trying to control it.

Now she advises others how to do the same – and top of the list is changing your social media settings, something Tunnicliffe says is a powerful force when it comes to our body relationships.

‘‘It really impacts our brain. If your body isn’t that kind of body, there is a massive disconnect.’’

Portia Campbell says her participants were acutely aware of filters and probably knew that celebrities have trainers and nutritionists. Now, women are more likely to compare themselves to people they see as relatable.

‘‘So if you’re a 26-year-old female in New Zealand and you follow a 28-year-old Les Mills fitness instructor who happens to be a micro influencer and she’s got a very fit body and you happen to follow her because you like her smoothie recipes... that woman feels more achievable.’’

Is that more problematic than comparing yourself to Kim Kardashian? ‘‘The challenge for me with the Les Mills instructor is simply that there is more of them. There are more micro influencers that have the ability to influence these women’s feelings about themselves than there are celebrities.’’

Massey University professor of critical health psychology Sarah Riley, who mentored Campbell, says #bodypositivity can backfire in that people who don’t feel proud or positive about their bodies can face the added guilt of not feeling positive. Instead of a collective change in body acceptance, the onus falls on the individual to either change or approve of themselves.

‘‘So now you have a body you don’t like and a mind you don’t like, so that for me is the meanness of this framing – that you are doubly flawed,’’ says Riley.

She relates this to post-feminism, when it was supposed the movement had solved issues and therefore there was no reason to be activated. ‘‘There was an argument that there was an illegible rage because we did need it, and we were told we didn’t. If you experienced inequality you couldn’t describe it because it didn’t exist. In the same way, now we have a situation where, we live in a body diverse, welcoming world, so if we’re not welcoming, or we don’t feel welcomed, that’s a problem that’s within us, and we can’t critique the wider culture out there.’’

UK essayist Pandora Sykes touched on this in her new book of essays, How Do We Know We’re Doing It Right? ‘‘Our desire for authenticity has led to a fetishisation of our flaws: the idea that imperfections must be proudly bared or, at the extreme end, invented... Suggesting that we should love our marks, scars and cellulite can feel like a new kind of bind. Like if you don’t loudly declare undying love for your flaws, then you’re doing the sisterhood wrong.’’

‘‘They appreciate seeing a diverse range of bodies on Instagram, however that doesn’t necessarily change how they feel about themselves... I think that suggests that we potentially haven’t moved as forward as we would have liked.’’ Portia Campbell

‘‘Ialso think we are so used to expecting ‘diversity’ to come with a sob story,’’ says Auckland influencer and fashion blogger Jess Molina. ‘‘Like we’re only validated or accepted in our trauma. Either that or we need to be exceptional in order to belong.’’

In June last year Molina posted a photo of the light shining on her legs while wearing some beige shorts, and wrote, ‘‘Normalise seeing fat bodies in your feed... I feel like too often people think of plussized fashion as bright colours and bold patterns or head to toe monochrome.’’

The post received a huge amount of engagement, and later Molina recounted that post in conversation with Sonya Renee Taylor, author of Your Body Is Not An Apology, for Ensemble magazine.

Taylor lamented how the radical roots of the body positive movement had been lost, and what we were left with was a ‘‘diluted, capitalised version’’. ‘‘We should be cautious of anything that doesn’t have a politic. If it doesn’t have a political perspective with it, then it’s just capitalism,’’ Taylor told Molina.

Plus-sized fashion blogger Meagan Kerr agrees. ‘‘We’re now marketed things to look that way or have that lifestyle, or do this course to feel better about yourself... brands now use this as marketing spin. They say they’re body positive and inclusive, and they might use ‘plus size’ models but their clothing range only goes to size 18, thereby excluding a large portion of the plus size community.

‘‘While social media enables us, especially those of us in marginalised bodies, to see not just a wider range of bodies but in particular bodies like ours... it can also reinforce beauty ideals.’’

Massey University fat studies scholar Dr Cat Pause says at the core of it all: ‘‘We live in a fathating culture and that’s true for pretty much everywhere around the world.’’

There’s a lot of different things that underpin that attitude towards fatness, she says. ‘‘I would attribute a lot of it back to what I call the unholy trinity of why we can’t have nice things – white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism.’’

Pause says fat people continue to be discriminated against in most areas – housing, education, employment, the legal system and healthcare. The latter is a biggie – Pause says fat people are less likely to receive diagnostic testing, spend less time with doctors, and receive poorer quality care.

Moral panic over obesity levels and representation of fat people in media (recognise the funny, good-hearted fat person in almost any Hollywood film who is apologetic for her size and is always trying to be socially palatable?) further perpetuate this, Pause says. So does social media. Tunnicliffe sees this – relaying the myths and contradictions like, carbs are bad, you shouldn’t eat after a certain time of night, your body requires breaks from eating and detoxing is something you should do.

And while Pause says there is ‘‘a bit more representation’’ in media now, ‘‘we have hundreds of years to catch up’’.

‘‘Everyone has anti-fat attitudes. We find them in kids as young as three. We’re not born hating fat people, we’re not born finding fat people disgusting, or that fat people are lazy or lacking discipline or willpower. We learned these attitudes, we can absolutely unlearn them.’’

While we might see more diversity, both Molina and Tunnicliffe say a lot of it can be token – and perhaps that’s why a lot us aren’t feeling positive. Tunnicliffe: ‘‘There’s some really deep stuff there that doesn’t really go with a Dove campaign.’’ Molina: ‘‘Diversity and inclusion have turned into a bit of a buzzword... some brands think they’re being diverse because they cast someone who looks different from all the campaigns they’ve done in the past. Others think they’re being inclusive when they have a model who is maybe two sizes bigger than sample size and think that constitutes plus size.’’

Diversity of course is also not just different shapes or weights: it’s skin colours, able-ness, and age. Paralympian Rebecca Dubber, co-host of Stuff podcast What’s Wrong With You? and a retired swimmer, said she felt the double sting of all the internal and external scrutiny that comes as a high performance athlete in a swimsuit, as well as being a wheelchair user.

Seeing her peers at the Paralympics was a wonderful reminder of what other bodies in sport look like – and, having grown up idealising Paris Hilton, ultimately becoming an athlete helped her see life was not one-size-fits-all. Like Tunnicliffe, Dubber says choosing who you follow on social media can help or hinder our relationship with our bodies.

‘‘The only women I had to look up to were nondisabled,’’ she says. ‘‘I was always striving for this body type I will never be physically able to have. It was quite detrimental to my self-image and how I saw myself. I got to the point where I was so miserable, I would buy only certain clothes and dream of this certain life where I wasn’t disabled.’’

Eventually she realised beauty ideals weren’t changing. ‘‘I might as well try to make the most of who I am, and loving what I have. Social media, for all its faults, has been a huge help. The type of people I’m seeing on my Instagram feed look like me, and are reflective of me.’’

Over Facebook I ask, is anyone any happier with their body now?

Soon, a message appears.

‘‘Growing up during the tail end of the Kate Moss era definitely had an impact,’’ says the writer.

‘‘But it must be having such an impact to see bodies which don’t even really occur naturally everywhere.

‘‘I feel like I turned 30 and suddenly I had all these new problem areas.

‘‘I wish I could go back to the days of only hating my stomach, while also realising it’s only going to get worse from here... I think what I’d like is to not think about my body so much at all.’’