It directly insinuates that our emotions are wrong and if we just cheered up we’d be thin and confident and love ourselves. Newsflash: I’m a grown up, I can decide on my own whether I want to like or loathe myself. I’d prefer to scroll and shop without the constant reminders that I should analyse myself and delve into the mental shitstorm of coping with a fat body. I’m really good at that already, thank you.
The backlash against the body positive moment really is happening. It began when mass fashion brands brutalised the message of Body Positivity and made it into a stunt to promote extended size ranges, plastering the slogan all over their social platforms and stores in a frenzied attempt to make larger women feel included. But it turned out they weren’t following through. I think the best way to explain this is with an example; I hesitated to use this particular one because I don’t want to compromise GLAMOUR’s commercial relationship with this brand, but sod it, it’s a masterclass in double standards and misappropriation, and the reason why #BodyPositive is so #CrazyNegative. So, Oasis, I’m calling you out.
I walked into your huge, double-fronted, two-story shop on Oxford Circus recently, because I heard you’d launched a plus size range. Curious to see what I could spend my paycheque on, I searched around but couldn’t see anything above a size 16. When I asked where the ‘curve’ section was, the store manager told me in these exact words “it’s all online as a body-positive trial to see if it sells, and there isn’t room on the shop floor for it anyway” (LOL the irony). In fact I think I did literally laugh out loud: is inclusivity a ‘trial’? Is this what they call fat-shaming? I’m not sure; but I am sure I was being told that me and my wide hips and big bum and chunky arms are not welcome through these doors, and to disappear into a hidden corner of invisible online shame where I can’t ruin the skinny, cool, perfect aesthetic of their shop floor. And the ‘Curve’ range online? There are four pairs of trousers. Oasis: you are all fart no shit. How completely backwards. Abusing an emotional movement for the sake of a marketing microtrend is the reason #BodyPositivity is having this backlash.
But all it not lost. We should be thanking Oasis and their sanctimonious endeavour: with all backlashes tends to come a calming antidote, a sensible solution that negates this defrauded frenzy. It’s called #BodyNeutral and it’s the rational outlook that I’m craving for. It means a global silencing of the hysterical messages being shouted at fat women, and a progressive new platform for all real bodies to partake in society unconditionally.
Crucially, it is not specific to size, BMI, ‘plus’ or ‘curve’, but about bringing an authentic, interesting and enlightening spectrum of humans onto our radars, as #BodyPositive originally intended. Because seeing myriad beauty in all its glorious, complicated, awkward, silently chronic, visibly marked, big, small, imperfect, perfect, abled and disabled array is true power and positivity to all.