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“We never stopped standing up for ourselves, but it seems like everyone else did,” said plus-size model Tabria Majors, after noticing a worrying trend on her social media feed.
But she wasn't the only woman taking note. In recent months, the plus-size community has had to deal with feelings of abandonment as some of the influencers they've followed online (whose content typically challenged weight stigma) have begun to visibly shrink.
“I feel like we're living in the early 2000s,” curvy model Raeann Langas told her followers after witnessing a rise in fatphobic rhetoric online.
Famed plus-size model Tess Holliday shared a video of herself lying in bed, writing about the clip: “Watching another plus-size influencer lose weight only to turn around and blame the body positive community.” Meanwhile, author Sarah Sapora shared a series of tips for followers whose favorite fat content creators no longer “wanted to be fat.”
There seems to be no escaping the rise of “thin is cool” messages currently permeating social media, fashion and the wellness industry. Thanks to popular injectable medications like Ozempic and Wegovy, whose side effects include weight loss, it’s never been easier to achieve a slimmer body.
However, for those who have felt represented by the body positivity movement, seeing several plus-size influencers undergo their own weight loss transformations has triggered feelings of betrayal and abandonment. Some see it as a disregard for the community they have cultivated online, while others fear their content has become fatphobic as it equates weight loss with good “health.”
Remi Bader, an influencer known for her candid reviews of plus-size clothing, recently set Reddit pages alight when she refused to comment on speculation surrounding her weight loss journey. The 29-year-old TikTok star said she was instead setting boundaries with her 2.3 million followers, especially amid an onslaught of criticism over her body.
“Every day I wake up and realize that I am lucky to do what I do and I wouldn’t change it for the world. However, when you go online and choose not to set your own boundaries, whatever they may be, people get used to feeling like they are obligated to know every single detail about you,” Bader wrote in an essay published in Nylon“Offering my entire life became the expectation. The audience felt entitled and I felt indebted.”
Unsurprisingly, her decision to keep the details of her weight loss private sparked a backlash from fans who had been following her body-positive posts for quite some time. One Instagram user claimed the influencer was “ignoring the elephant in the room” by refusing to address comments about her appearance, and questioned whether Bader “should be more transparent” with her followers.
For Brooklyn-based plus-size model and content creator Jordan Underwood, it's not Bader's decision to forego personal details about her fitness journey that has the plus-size community upset.
“Remi has stated that she does not consider herself an activist, and if we are constantly demanding activism from her, it is unfair to both her and the movement,” said Underwood, who uses they/him pronouns. The Independent. Rather, it presents a moral dilemma of sorts when a plus-size influencer who no longer identifies as part of the community they have built online continues to benefit from that same platform.
It’s easy to argue that thinness has always been trendy. As with most social justice movements, body positivity — which aims to dismantle weight-based discrimination and stigma — faltered once it became “trendy” in the early 2010s. Brands soon realized that size inclusivity was profitable, and several fashion brands expanded their size ranges online and in stores. But when “heroin chic” resurged in 2022, only to be followed by the popularization of weight-loss drugs, body positivity suddenly seemed to fall out of focus.
Just a year after launching the plus-size range, Old Navy pulled its plus-size clothing from its retail stores, while LOFT discontinued its plus-size collection entirely to cut costs from the pandemic. Brands abandoning promises they made to plus-size customers has always been a normal occurrence in the name of capitalism, but people were a little less forgiving when body-positive influencers started doing the same.
“All influencers, whether they consider themselves a business or not, are in some way a business,” said Virgie Tovar, an activist and Forbes A contributor whose work focuses on the plus-size market and weight discrimination in the workplace, social media has become an industry in its own right, according to Tovar.
But, as in any business, having a clear set of values is critical to maintaining a loyal following. “The hard part is when you’re an influencer and you present your value proposition and you gain followers based on that value proposition, and then you decide, ‘I don’t want to do anything with that. Those aren’t my values anymore. I decided I want to do something else. ’ There’s a set of actions and responsibilities that are expected.”
When an influencer decides to rebrand their business (say, if it focuses on wellness rather than rejecting the weight loss industry), they need to do some due diligence on their online community, some of whom don’t agree with diet culture or fitness content. “I put the metaphorical dollar in this bucket, and now you’ve changed the label on the bucket, and you’re taking that dollar and leveraging it to do something I never wanted my money to be used for,” she said.
Content creator Alex Ochoa, known online as @MadeByAlexNYC, became the subject of an online controversy earlier this year when she shared an Instagram Reel documenting her weight loss journey. Ochoa, who runs the inclusive clothing brand Shiny By Nature, posted a video of herself wearing her brand’s pastel tennis skirt ensemble, along with the caption: “POV: Deciding to lose weight because you love yourself.”
The comments section was filled with followers criticizing Ochoa for implying that the only way to achieve health or happiness is to lose weight. For other customers, it was even more frustrating to see an entrepreneur backtrack on the ideals of self-love and acceptance he had built into his brand.
“If you, as a plus-size influencer, are tired of health issues or you’re tired of feeling a certain way about your body, you want to improve that and you’re taking steps to do so, that’s not a betrayal to me,” said Cindy Noir, a content creator and personal development speaker based in Atlanta. The Independent“Blowjob is when you change your body to be superficial and they start downplaying or belittling the body you once had, or belittling people who are still part of the fat community.”
If the buzzword of the 2010s was “body positivity,” its place has been taken this decade by “parasocial,” a term used to describe the way mass media consumers interact with media figures. Social media platforms were created to form parasocial relationships by making internet personalities more accessible than ever before. We put influencers (relatively normal people) on a pedestal, only to be disappointed when they inevitably let us down.
“It’s not just about plus-size influencers, but the parasocial bond between social media content creators and their platform is very dangerous,” Cindy said.
Indeed, we should hold certain influencers accountable when their platform has been rebranded as one that perpetuates diet culture and harmful rhetoric, or no longer serves the community they continue to profit from. But as for their desire to conform to societal standards of thinness, that may never change. The only thing we can control is how we consume their content, if at all.
When we scroll through social media and come across content that may make us feel angry or disappointed, Cindy suggested muting, unfollowing, or even blocking as the best course of action. However, there should also be a focus on where exactly these conversations about body positivity are taking place. Yes, social media has proven to be an important organizing tool, but the real way to combat our current cultural tendency of “being thin is cool” is by building a community offline as well.
“It’s important for us to say, ‘What world do I want to create? Do I want to create a world where people take drugs for the rest of their lives to reduce their body weight? Or do I believe in a world where biodiversity is real and important?’” Tovar said.
“And I think most of us know the answer to that question.”
