All About That Bad Activism: Bodies in Trouble

Hello wonderful readers! It’s the BB here with some ideas that I’ve been meaning to commit to words for awhile, but it just took the right inspiration and research to articulate my feelings.

Our blog is all about breaking the fat glass ceiling; we want to show how successful, powerful, and worthy fat women are. Even though we operate through this lens because we identify as fat, feminist, cisgender women, we often open up the discussion to all bodies. This is an absolute necessity as part of the Body Positive Movement, because fat bodies aren’t the only bodies under scrutiny, and women aren’t the only group subject to body shaming, either. I reiterate these truths so that readers can keep in mind the expansive nature of the BoPo movement as we discuss the specific dimensions of body shaming that together form the need for body positivity. Overall, Gribbski’s Guide brings our lovely readers along on the many aspects of our journey to body acceptance.

Today, I’d like to write about an extremely important aspect of that journey: how I reclaimed my femininity in a fat body, and how those of us who consider femininity an important part of our identities (and I mean individuals of any body type, gender, or sex) are under fire.

When I first heard Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass” I really wanted to be thrilled about it. Here was a sexy, curvy woman singing about how big women are desirable. In her music video she wears these unconventional outfits that show off her shape and she even incorporates a fat man in the dance crew. At first I thought this was great—she gives both fat women and men visibility as worthy and sexy. However, I quickly became skeptical of the video, lyrics, and overall message when I started to analyze the subtle body shaming within a song that is supposed to be body positive.

WAIT, WAIT! Pop culture throws fatties a bone and now you’re going to criticize it?!

You’re goddamn right I am.

If you haven’t already, please check out the video and lyrics here. As I said, it seems wonderful on the surface; but as much as I want to love it I just can’t. For weeks something about this song, and about various images I’ve been seeing online, have been bothering me. Finally, I figured out the specific aspects of the song that were problematic for me, and they line up with phenomena I’ve been experiencing in my own life recently. The following messages (lies) are steadily becoming more popular in the mainstream version of what masks itself as body positivity:

1. “Real Women Are Curvy.” There are so many problems with this statement. First of all, it’s an offensive backlash against the idea that fat women (or fat female-identified individuals) are often made to feel like they aren’t sexy or feminine. Instead of addressing the problems with that line of thinking, some have adopted the idea that curvier, larger women are actually more feminine and small, petite women aren’t. Instead of reclaiming femininity for all body types, proponents of the “real women” message only support one body type at a time, taking an extremely reductive approach to what can be feminine, sexy, and worthy. 

Check out Reddit’s Fat People Hate page here to get an idea of how fat women are reduced to sexless, identity-less objects of disdain. Reddit is by no means a scholarly source; what I'm trying to show is how fat hate, body hate, and body shaming are perpetuated at the cultural level by media from music to forums. 

The term “androgynous blob” is used in the comments to describe fat people. Fat men are berated for having prominent breasts while fat women are chided “you only have breasts because you’re fat; they aren’t real.” Statements like these spark the flawed activism of saying “real women have curves” and contribute to a body shaming cycle that doesn’t help anyone.  

For a long time I felt as though my own femininity was at stake because of my weight. I felt like I had to exaggerate and perform my gender in an over-the-top way to be taken seriously as a cisgender female who values femininity as a part of her identity. I would alternate between feeling like my over-performance made me look childish, to thinking that it was the only way I could be sexy. My immersion in feminism and body positivity is really what helped me realize that my expression of my own identity is not contingent upon anyone else’s biases, and certainly not upon their unfair and destructive stereotyping. If I feel feminine, worthy, and empowered, then I am, despite what Reddit users are saying.

I also don’t need to shame petite women as “sticks” or tell them that they are less desirable to men to make myself feel better about my own identity. Here’s a common internet photo that is, unfortunately, one of many adopting the “real women are X” fallacy:

Problematically, there has been backlash to the backlash by others adopting the idea that “Real Women are Skinny/Thin/Petite/” etc. It is incredibly dangerous to invalidate another individual’s femininity because it sends the cultural message that it is 1. okay to put certain types of women into neat, suffocating little boxes, and 2. it is okay for others to dictate how women should perform their gender. Check out this advertisement for a plus size clothing store: 

This ad says: “Well, real women are curvy BUT they also need to be modest and wear a certain type of clothing to be considered feminine, worthy, and attractive.” What is modest for a fat woman? No cleavage, rolls, or stretch marks showing? Covering up big arms and legs? A myriad of other body shaming dress code rules? I wholly reject that idea there is one particular way to perform my femininity as a fat, cisgender female, and I wholly reject that idea that there is any one particular way for any individual to perform their gender, sexuality, or identity.

These internet rants and ads bring us back full circle to “All About That Bass.” The following lines, meant to boost the confidence of curvy women, cannot do so without shaming thinner women, essentially invalidating the body positive purpose behind the song:

“I'm bringing booty back
Go ahead and tell them skinny bitches that
No I'm just playing. I know you think you're fat
But I'm here to tell ya
Every inch of you is perfect from the bottom to the top”

Although Trainor seems to recapture the BoPo message at the end of the stanza, the lines about “skinny bitches” and “I know you think you’re fat” go beyond ‘playful’ and prey on the insecurities of smaller women and invalidate their own worries about body image. This is not a productive way to empower any body type; if you have to shame one to hold up the other, then the activism isn’t effective.

Additionally, if you glorify feminine bodies by rigid standards, regardless of whether you purport small or large as more attractive, then you limit the power and potential of those feminine identities and bodies. Another limiting notion in “All About That Bass” links sexuality and attractiveness to self-worth:

2. Worth is intrinsically linked to ability to attract a mate. This statement has been perpetuated in pop culture for a long time. With songs, movies, and magazine ads pushing the “perfect” types of women for the pleasure of the male gaze, women have long been expected to live up to unrealistic ideals. "All About That Bass" has not created, but rather re-energized, the idea that curvier women are more attractive to men. Here are more lines that communicate this message:

“'Cause I got that boom boom that all the boys chase
And all the right junk in all the right places”

“Yeah, my mama she told me don't worry about your size
She says, "Boys like a little more booty to hold at night."”

There are no right or wrong places to have “junk;” the idea that there is a right or wrong way to have a body is one of the foundations of body shaming. It certainly shouldn’t be used in a song that has been championed as a mainstream big girl win. Further, it perpetuates the idea that having these curves is a good thing because it will help attract a mate. The myth that women in particular are only worth their ability to charm, entice, or keep a man happy, besides being extremely patriarchal and heteronormative, is completely reductive towards the potential and worth that women possess. The fact that a woman’s worth is still being connected to her attractiveness in so many pervasive cultural outlets is disturbing.

Lately I’ve been having conversations with a very close friend about body shaming and the need to find a partner. She is a small, petite, cisgender female who has been made to feel that her body isn’t attractive to others, and that her worth is based on her ability to find and keep a partner. It has been so rewarding and also challenging to help her see how smart, worthy, and beautiful she is both inside and out. It is an absolute atrocity that a strong, empowered, smart mother of three has been made to feel less in her identity because of the bad activism of others. The difficulty of changing our minds about ourselves lies in the cultural bombardment of body shaming and women’s prescribed roles that we experience and absorb everyday.

In every song that we listen to and movie we watch where body shaming and misogyny run rampant, we are being complicit in letting these attitudes control us if we don’t fight back and think critically about the cultural bullshit we’re being served. If we are going to reclaim our identities, whatever identities they may be, then we have to strike back against our culture. Every television ad, every lyric, and every happy ending to a whitewashed romcom is just another stab at body positivity and feminism. These stereotypes invade our media and culture and when we don’t see them, or when we see them and let them thrive, they are shaping who we become and how we think of ourselves and others.

Now although “All About That Bass” sparked my line of thinking and helped me articulate how I reclaimed my own femininity, I am by no means saying there aren’t other songs that contain the same fallacies. In fact, there are A TON of songs that contain the same fallacies, and even those that INTEND to offend or stereotype. I am simply using this song as an example of activism that could have been well-intentioned, but in the end falls short. I’m not being critical or oversensitive here; poor activism must be identified if we are going to remedy body shaming and other social injustices.

We can talk about specific experiences within the BoPo movement and specific identities WITHOUT shaming others by taking an intersectional approach where we acknowledge that we are talking about a particular experience situated in an array of unique experiences that acknowledge privilege and push back against offensive cultural constructs.   

Stay tuned for an example of productive activism in music from the WW coming soon, and in the meantime enjoy these empowering internet memes: