As weight-loss drugs and surgeries gain popularity, some body-positive figures are adopting the very ideals they once opposed, leaving followers questioning what this means for body acceptance.
There are very few topics that are as emotionally charged as that of body weight. It is a subject that has long been steeped in tension, discomfort, and societal pressure, and approaching conversations surrounding weight and weight loss can feel uncomfortable. Social convention cautions to ‘never ask a woman her weight’, and it feels safer to evade the subject at all costs than to risk a misstep that could cause offence. Yet in a culture obsessed with thinness and transformation, silence is no longer the appropriate course of action.
The rise of weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic, Mounjaro, and Wegovy, combined with an expanding array of surgical interventions, has only intensified society’s fixation on slimness. When ‘quick fix’ solutions become not only accessible but increasingly in demand, it reinforces the perception of weight loss as desirable. And when over 1.25 million people are suffering from an eating disorder (in the UK alone), we must ask what messages are being sent – and who is being harmed – when minimising the body is portrayed not just as possible, but aspirational.
The effects of this phenomenon can incite anxiety and undue awareness about what our bodies should or should not look like. When these anxieties deepen, the result can be a dangerous spiral into disordered thinking and habits that can, for some, culminate in severe eating disorders. And with millions affected, those vulnerable may be far closer to home than we realise.
At 14 years old, my little sister was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa, a serious mental illness that can cause people to limit how much they eat or drink. Her life was threatened by an illness that made every day a battle; she was unwell, unhappy, and one of thousands suffering from the condition. At 17 years old, I became a Young Carer to my sister, often absent from school and social circles as I assumed the role of supporting her as she navigated the uphill path to recovery.
Her days were consumed by the harmful body expectations that governed her lifestyle, while mine were consumed by a seemingly insurmountable effort to dismantle them in her mind. I cannot begin to imagine the devastating grip of disordered thoughts that dominated her teenage brain, but as anorexia infiltrated our household, I soon became all too familiar with the scrutinising lens that took over my own world. Diet culture, fashion runways, ‘skinnytok’ – aspects of our life and culture that had previously seemed benign, swiftly became insidious as I witnessed the toll they took on those closest to me.
You can no longer open TikTok without learning about calorie deficits, can no longer scroll on Pinterest without recoiling at the glamourised 2000s-Kate-Moss-Heroin-Chic-Aesthetic. There comes a realisation that decades of prescriptive beauty norms are entrenched in our everyday media, as we are conditioned to uphold thinness as an idealised image of beauty.
The constant consumption of such media is corruptive to how we think about food, weight, and our wider world. Toxic body ideals are normalised and romanticised, and sometimes it can just feel depressing. So in the midst of such a dark and damaging online culture, discovering body-positive spaces and plus-size influencers can feel like a rare but powerful glimmer of hope.
The number of pages and platforms devoted to promoting body acceptance began to climb in the 2010s; confronting capitalism, challenging patriarchy, and directly tackling a negative culture that was exacerbating issues of self-esteem. Plus-size influencers became pivotal figures as they pushed back against empty promises of inclusivity, demanding real change from retailers. Their voices, alongside the growing body positivity movement, sparked a shift towards plus-size clothing lines and more inclusive representation in models.
Ashley Graham, supermodel and body-positive proponent, became the first plus-size model to appear on the cover of Vogue in 2017. Social media became flooded with taglines of body acceptance and self-love. As each wave broke, there became a resounding new attitude: that every body is worthy of visibility, respect, and celebration. The destructive diet culture of the early 2000s had met a worthy opponent, and the spotlight placed on thin beauty standards began to sway towards the direction of “normal”, healthy bodies of resistance.
But there does lie a danger in placing such importance on these figures of resistance. A small number of individuals cannot support the needs of a worldwide community, and many women pay a personal price for taking on the role of an influencer. Being open online means surrendering a level of privacy and exposing elements of your life to scrutiny from strangers. This can be empowering, especially when messages come flooding in from young women saying these influencers help them feel more confident in their bodies, or when communities are forged around shared experiences of self-love and recovery. But the response isn’t always kind. Violent criticism can also flood in, as the influencers who offer their mid-size or plus-size bodies up as representation can face hate as a consequence of challenging the norm. And when the burden of representation rests on so few, the pressure can quickly become too heavy to bear.
The trend we are witnessing now is that many influencers and celebrities who built their platforms on body positivity are undergoing rapid, often abrupt weight loss – seemingly done through artificial means. Of course, it is imperative to recognise that some people take these medications for legitimate health reasons, and that these medical advances can truly be life-changing for those who need it. But when weight loss drugs and surgeries gain popularity, especially among those who embodied anti-diet values, it can feel like a deep contradiction to those who looked to them for validation, resistance, and hope.
Not only is this transformation emotionally dissonant, but it is also financially inaccessible and thus alienating to many followers. Such procedures and medications are often prohibitively expensive, and therefore simply unfeasible to the average person, making these transformations feel not only disappointing but also deeply unrelatable. The communities built around body-positive and relatable content are left behind, as the very influencers who once represented the everyday struggles of their audiences now showcase lifestyles that few can afford to replicate. Many celebrities are now facing public backlash, as fans who once praised their body-positive messaging feel outraged by their sudden embrace of medicalised weight loss.
One such individual is Remi Bader, a TikTok influencer with over 2.2 million followers. Bader gained popularity for her ‘realistic clothing hauls’, in which she bought and tried outfits from high street retailers as a US size 12 and above. Women flocked to her page, comforted by her ‘clothes are meant to fit you, not the other way around’ philosophy. Her message was powerful, and her values clear: altering and diminishing your body is not the solution. The philosophy is crucial, especially for eating disorder patients facing recovery; minimising your body is dangerous, especially in a society that already seeks to minimise the voices of women.
On 1st August 2024, Remi Bader posted a TikTok video expressing outrage that Forever 21 had deleted its plus-size clothing account on Instagram. The emotional post mourned the deletion of such a monumental platform for larger bodies, and the clothing line that catered for them. While it’s empowering to see women use their voices to hold huge brands to account, a year on, Remi’s TikTok is a very different place. Bader announced she had undergone ‘SADI’ weight-loss surgery, having suffered unpleasant side effects after her experience on Ozempic and Mounjaro. These drugs, while effective for managing type 2 diabetes, have been found to cause nausea, hypoglycemia, pancreatitis, thyroid tumours, and gastrointestinal issues, particularly when used by people without medical need. The normalisation of their use has raised real medical concerns surrounding the long-term health consequences for non-diabetic users.
Remi is fully entitled to make decisions about her own body; the concern does not lie with individual choice, but rather the broader cultural messaging and harm. So when her online content and messaging to young followers is suddenly altered, it is hard to ignore the contradictions in how dramatically her platform has shifted. From declaring that “[she is] really proud to represent women that look just like [her]” and standing up against the erasure of plus-sized bodies in mainstream media, Remi’s shift emphasises just how easily even body-positive figures can be swept into the same systems of erasure they once resisted.
Remi Bader is one of many choosing drastic weight loss after a career built on the body acceptance movement; pop singer and A-List celebrity Meghan Trainor has also come under fire. In an Instagram caption from April, Trainor gave a “shoutout to Mounjaro” following public discussion around her image change. While her success as a music artist should never be reduced to commentary on her body, there is a sense of indignation in her cheerful endorsement of the drug. 2014 saw the singer make millions from her hit single ‘All About That Bass’, a song that openly rejected the “stick-figure” body standards and playfully mocked “skinny bitches”. Yet years later, she appears to have embraced the very ideals she once critiqued. In a recent live performance, the artist even changed her lyrics, swapping “I ain’t no size two” for “I got some new boobs”. The abrupt (and deliberate) change in language transforms what was once a celebration of body diversity into a narrative of modification – leaving fans of the original self-love anthem with a more complicated message.
The goal here is never to dictate the choices that women make regarding their own bodies. It is never to shame or seek to limit women’s bodily autonomy. Rather, the goal is to question who is harmed when body-positive influencers reject the values that they once preached. When celebrities veer from empowering content to a display of weight-loss interventions and transformation narratives, the shift can feel like a betrayal – not just of their past messaging, but of the communities who found solace in it.
I worried for my sister. For young people in eating disorder recovery, this feels like a validation of their darkest fears and a subtle encouragement of their own dangerous measures to achieve weight loss. I asked her, explicitly, how she felt witnessing such role models adapt their bodies, and subsequently their digital output, to exemplify thinness. Disappointed was her answer. Losing voices of body positivity leaves a vacuum in online spaces and contributes to a culture increasingly obsessed with shrinking bodies.
As someone who cared for a loved one with anorexia, I feel the loss of these body-positive figures deeply – their departure feels like duplicity. And for those still suffering under the weight of toxic beauty standards, they are left without louder voices of resistance against the culture that demands they take up less space.
But perhaps this disappointment is misdirected. The responsibility of altering cultural attitudes shouldn’t fall on the shoulders of a small handful of women. Remi Bader and Meghan Trainor’s transformations don’t reflect personal failure, but rather the cultural failure to sustain spaces where plus-size bodies are accepted without condition. As long as we live within a patriarchy, women will always be encouraged to be kept small, take up less space, and be weak against dominating political powers. If you’re hungry, you’re not thinking about revolution. The problem lies not with influencers, not with women, and their bodies, but with a system that starves them of power.
