Oral Content
Topic: The shift of larger bodies being more represented in media due to the Body Positivity Movement
Purpose: To explain this recent shift that formed around 2012 because the media should continue to be more representative of realistic body types.
Thesis: Society has shifted from idealizing the thin woman’s body to wanting to accept one’s body despite its “flaws” because of the popularization of the body positivity movement in the last decade.
Introduction
At the young age of six, I was enrolled into a Russian ballet school and body-shamed every lesson for not being thinner. The ideologies around me represented that I had to be skinny to be beautiful and appealing to look at, especially on stage. The costumes given to me were always skin-tight and too small, making me look at myself in the mirror and question why the others at the ballet school seemed to discriminate against me.
I quit ballet school. I hated being treated differently for being bigger than the other girls in my class, and I left without looking back. The skinny models in the media had made me think that was what I was supposed to look like, or I wasn’t beautiful. However, shifting towards today’s society, that ideal has changed and larger body types are more represented, making myself and others more accepting with my appearance.
Body
Main Idea – The body positive movement emerged in 2012 to challenge unrealistic standards for women in the media, as thin, white women were idealized by many and became the standard for a beautiful woman in the 2000s.
A. Support
- Celebrity images on the cover of magazines always showed celebrities to have a skinny stature. Young women in this decade that grew up in this environment of idealizing the skinny body have shown to have a worsened mental state concerning body-image.
- Media in the 2000s has promoted the ideal woman body type to be a skinny white woman, as the turn of the century had influenced young women to want to look like Victoria Secret models or have the “Barbie look” like Angelina Jolie with unrealistic standards for all women.
- Slide 1: Show images of 2000s magazines with these societal standards of beauty
B. Support
- Media in the 2000s heavily idealized being skinny, and it was commonplace that being fat was looked down upon. For example, the 2004 movie Mean Girls, portrayed Regina George as the popular, skinny girl, and the plot included girls sabotaging Regina by feeding her foods that would make her gain weight so no man would like her anymore
- Slide 2: Show image from the movie scene described
Main Idea – Social media that contains content about fitspiration and thinspiration are heavily damaging to one’s body image and tries to come off as body positivity, however, it is the opposite.
A. Support
- Due to about “89 percent of adults using at least one form of social media daily”, photo-based social media platforms such as Instagram create countless opportunities for appearance-comparison sand stir up guilt in one’s body image (Cohen). Constantly scrolling through content intended to inspire weight loss or fitness goals causes a person to compare themselves to the pictures of thin people shown, inevitably creating a negative body image and an incentive to change one’s appearance
- Constantly scrolling through content intended to inspire weight loss or fitness goals causes a person to compare themselves to the pictures of thin people shown, inevitably creating a negative body image and an incentive to change one’s appearance.
B. Support
- As body-positivity became more popular, posts labeled as thinspiration or fitspiration have also become idealized in social media. These categories of posts “have been found to disseminate messages that conflate notions of health with thin-ideals, exclude individuals of larger body sizes, and promote fat stigmatization and disordered eating” (Cohen).
- Critics of the body-positivity movement state that with the popularity of these types of posts, more viewers of these posts believe that they need to do anything in order to feel positive about their body, such as excessive exercise or dieting
- Slide 3: Show example of these types of post
Main Idea – With body positivity becoming more prevalent in the media, more realistic bodies are being shown through advertisements, celebrities, and television.
A. Support
- The clothing brand Aerie launched their #aeriereal campaign in 2014 which uses models with realistic bodies including those with stomach rolls, cellulite, and stretch marks in their advertising. After the launch of this campaign, sales went up by 20% and soared higher and higher.
- Dove’s self-esteem project which uses non-models of all different sizes and skin colors to “make beauty a source of confidence” with their marketing, because these women are committed to taking photos with no retouching or editing. Dove’s sales increased from $2.5 billion to $4 billion after using a diverse amount of appearances, which is similar to Aerie’s success.
- Slide 4: Show Aerie and Dove campaigns
B. Support
- Victoria Secret, famously known for their tall, skinny, clear-skinned models, had cancelled their 2019 fashion show for the first time in twenty-four years which was due to the increasingly popular body positivity movement which hurt the company’s image after not becoming representative of other body types unlike other brands.
- Lizzo’s popular tracks such as ‘Fitness’ and ‘My Skin’ strive to normalize all body types and want women to be confident and comfortable in their bodies.
- Slide 5: Show Victoria Secret models / Lizzo
Conclusion
The body positivity movement has shifted society’s view on beauty and has caused women to feel less pressure to live up to the unrealistic standards of always keeping a slim body.