Brands are appropriating the body-positive movement, and it needs to stop

A crucial aspect of 21st century corporatism is a company’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. Well-known brands like Sports Illustrated and Nike embrace diversity in their marketing campaigns, and modeling agencies such as Wilhemina and IMG are garnering praise for representing marginalized bodies.

The modern body-positive movement is visual, primarily existing on social media. #BodyPositive currently has over 8.5 million posts on Instagram and 4.1 billion views on TikTok. Used to sell everything from lingerie to yoga mats, once-inspiring rhetoric associated with the movement like “every body is beautiful” has become trite and cliche.

With the rise in mainstream marketing of body positivity, the movement is no longer representative of its radical origins. It wasn't always dominated by influencers and corporations.

Body positivity is a by-product of the fat liberation movement of the 1960s. At the time, it recognized fatphobia as a system of oppression and aimed to delegitimize the diet industry and fight against prejudice towards fat bodies. ​​Original texts like Fat is a Feminist Issue by Susie Orbach and Fat Power by Lew Louderback employed unapologetically political language.

These authors did not worry about being palatable to a white, thin, cisgender, and able-bodied audience. The focus was not on likes, followers, or sponsorships. 

Throughout the past two decades, corporations have commodified, or commercialized, body positivity for financial gain. Brands understand that marketing their products to a larger audience often increases sales, and highlighting diversity helps companies sell to the politically-conscious Gen Z consumer.

The blueprint for this faux-activist marketing is Mattel, the creator of Barbie. Since her creation in 1959, Barbie’s ultra-thin, hourglass body, blonde hair, and blue eyes has created iconic imagery for decades.

Barbie has been critiqued for supporting unhealthy beauty standards. But, this criticism was largely ignored by Mattel until 2015 when sales began to falter. Mattel then settled on three deviations to the traditional Barbie, adding tall, petite, and curvy dolls.

While the rebrand garnered much positive press, some were skeptical of Mattel’s true intentions. In The Guardian, writer Erika Kendall described the new dolls as “a last-ditch effort by a company that recognizes the only way to stay alive and ultimately thrive is to … diversify.” 

Barbie’s changing body does little to challenge anti-fatness, proven by the months of research and focus-group testing the brand conducted prior to the new dolls’ launch. When Mattel instructed young girls to play with the new dolls behind a two-way mirror, one six-year-old introduced the curvy doll to her peers, saying “Hello, I’m a fat person, fat, fat, fat.”

Evidently, society needs more than a diverse array of toys to address the hatred of fatness. It has been ingrained in us since childhood.

Similar to Mattel, in June 2021, Victoria’s Secret — with sales starkly on the decline over the past six years — launched a collective. They replaced their infamous angels with celebrities like actress Priyanka Chopra and soccer player and LGBTQ+ activist Megan Rapinoe. 

For decades, Victoria’s Secret prided itself on its exclusivity. The brand showcased extremely thin, cisgender, and able-bodied models as the beauty ideal. The brand didn't just perpetuate harmful beauty standards: it established them.

Their rebrand is a desperate cash grab that fails to support true change. They have even failed to do the bare minimum work of expanding their size range to accommodate larger bodies.

Another brand that thrives by capitalizing on body positivity’s success is Aerie, a subset of teen clothing store American Eagle Outfitters. Since 2014, they have not retouched their models’ bodies. The brand has an annual revenue of hundreds of millions of dollars, and the #AerieReal has over 300,000 posts on Instagram.

Aerie’s rhetoric is palatable and user-friendly. Positive affirmations dominate their social media feed: “Every booty is beach ready,” and “relax, recharge, refill your water bottle.” These are all important messages individually, but they fail to inspire action beyond a personal effort.

The initially revolutionary language of the fat liberation movement has been distorted. It is no longer political. The marketing of brands like Aerie places the responsibility on the individual consumer to fix their body image, instead of tackling larger systems that contribute to body dissatisfaction.

Aerie, for example, promotes the flawed idea that the cure for low self-esteem lies in the right pair of leggings or push-up bras, without reference to systems of oppression.

The commercialization of the body-positive movement reinforces the very worldview it aims to dismantle: beauty. The focus of the modern movement no longer is liberation, but is instead accommodation. It relies heavily on brands to determine who gets represented.

The body-positive movement must center the principles of liberation, education, community, and inclusivity. It must fight against discrimination, prejudice, and materialism. Authentic body positivity is social-justice based, radical, and intersectional.