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“We never stopped standing up for ourselves, but it seems like everyone else has,” said plus-size model Tabria Majors after noticing a worrying trend on her social media feed.
She wasn’t the only woman to notice. Over the past few months, the plus-size community has struggled with feelings of abandonment as some of the influencers they followed online – whose content usually challenged the overweight stigma – have become quite visibly smaller.
“I feel like we’re living in the early 2000s,” curve model Raeann Langas told her followers after observing a rise in fat-phobic rhetoric online.
Famous plus-size model Tess Holliday shared a video of herself lying in bed and captioned it: “Seeing another plus-size influencer lose weight only to blame the body positive community for it.” Meanwhile, author Sarah Sapora offered a series of tips for followers whose favorite fat content creators “didn’t want to be fat anymore.”
It seems there’s no escaping the increasing prevalence of the “thin is in” message that’s currently permeating social media, the fashion industry, and the wellness industry. Thanks to popular injectable drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy, whose side effects include weight loss, achieving a slimmer body has never been easier.
But for those who felt represented by the body positivity movement, seeing a number of plus-size influencers losing weight themselves has sparked feelings of betrayal and abandonment. Some see this as a departure from the community they have built online, while others fear their content has become fatphobic by equating weight loss with good “health.”
Remi Bader, an influencer known for her candid reviews of plus-size clothing, recently caused a stir on Reddit when she refused to comment on speculation about her weight loss. The 29-year-old TikTok star said she was instead setting boundaries for her 2.3 million followers, especially in the face of a barrage of body shaming.
“Every day I wake up and realize that I’m lucky to be doing what I do, and I wouldn’t change it for the world. But when you go online and decide not to set your own boundaries, whatever they may be, people get very used to feeling like they’re obligated to know every detail about you,” Bader wrote in an essay published in nylon“I was expected to reveal my entire life. The audience felt entitled to do so and I felt obligated to do so.”
Unsurprisingly, her decision to keep details of her weight loss private sparked a fierce reaction from fans who have been following her body positivity posts for 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.
Jordan Underwood, a content creator and plus-size model from Brooklyn, believes it is not Bader’s decision to forgo personal details of her fitness journey that has angered the plus-size community.
“Remi has stated that she does not consider herself an activist, and if we consistently demand activism from her, it is unfair to both her and the movement,” Underwood, who uses the pronouns “they” and “he,” told The Independent. Rather, it presents a moral dilemma when a plus-size influencer who no longer identifies as part of the community she has built online continues to profit from the same platform.
It could easily be argued that thinness has always been in. Like most social justice movements, the body positivity movement—which aims to dismantle weight-based discrimination and stigma—faltered when it became “trendy” in the early 2010s. Brands soon learned that offering size inclusivity was profitable, and a number of fashion labels expanded their size ranges online and in stores. But when “heroin chic” made a comeback in 2022, followed by the popularization of weight-loss drugs, body positivity suddenly seemed out of focus.
Just a year after introducing expanded sizing, Old Navy pulled its plus-size clothing from retail stores, while LOFT discontinued its plus-size collection entirely to cut pandemic costs. Brands breaking their promises to plus-size customers has always been par for the course in the name of capitalism, but people were a little less forgiving when body positivity influencers started doing the same.
“Every influencer, whether they consider themselves a company or not, is in some way a company,” says Virgie Tovar, an activist and Forbes Employee whose work focuses on the plus-size market and weight discrimination in the workplace. According to Tovar, social media has become an industry of its own.
But as in any business, having clear values is critical to retaining loyal followers. “The challenge is when you, as an influencer, lay out your value proposition and gain followers based on that value proposition and then decide, ‘I don’t want anything to do with that anymore. Those aren’t my values anymore. I’ve decided I want to do something different.’ There’s a set of actions and responsibilities that are expected.”
If an influencer decides to rebrand their business — for example, by focusing on wellness rather than rejecting the weight-loss industry — they need to carefully vet their online community, as some people may disagree with diet culture or fitness content. “I threw the metaphorical dollar in that bucket, and now you’ve switched the label on the bucket, and you’re taking that dollar and using it to do something I never wanted to spend my money on,” she said.
Content creator Alex Ochoa, known online as @MadeByAlexNYC, sparked controversy online earlier this year when she shared an Instagram video 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 set, along with the caption: “POV: Choosing to lose weight because you love yourself.”
The comments section was swarming with fans criticizing Ochoa for seemingly implying that the only path to health and happiness is to lose weight. For other customers, it was even more frustrating to see a business owner walk back the ideals of self-love and acceptance he had built into his brand.
“As a plus-size influencer, if you’re fed up with health issues or tired of feeling a certain way about your body, you want to improve that and you’re taking steps to do that, that’s not a betrayal to me,” said Cindy Noir, an Atlanta-based content creator and personal development speaker The Independent“Betrayal is when you alter your body to make it superficial and they start to downplay or belittle your body or belittle people who are still part of the fat community.”
While “body positivity” was the buzzword of the 2010s, this decade has seen the rise of “parasocial” – a term that describes the familiar way mass media consumers interact with media figures. Social media platforms were created for the formation of parasocial relationships by making internet personalities more accessible than ever before. We put influencers – relatively normal people – on a pedestal and then feel disappointed when they inevitably disappoint us.
“It’s not just affecting plus-size influencers, but the parasocial bond between social media content creators and their platform is so dangerous,” Cindy said.
Indeed, we should hold certain influencers accountable if their platform has been rebranded and now 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 have control over is how we consume their content—if at all.
When we’re scrolling through social media and come across content that might make us angry or disappointed, Cindy recommends muting, unfollowing, or even blocking the page as the best course of action. However, it’s also important to refocus on where exactly these conversations about body positivity are happening. Yes, social media has proven to be an important organizing tool, but the real way to counteract our current “thin is in” cultural trend is to build community offline, too.
“It’s important for us to say, ‘What kind of world do I want to create? Do I want to create a world where people have to take drugs for the rest of their lives to lower their body weight? Or do I believe in a world where biodiversity is real and matters?'” Tovar said.
“And I think most of us know the answer to that question.”
