The incredible sh
Just four years ago, big was beautiful: fashion brands while celebrities loudly applauded body positivity.
Five years ago I put a relatively unknown model on the cover of a magazine I was editing. The magazine was Cosmopolitan. The model was Tess Holliday (bottom left), a 300lb young woman from Mississippi. We had chosen to put her on the cover for no other reason than I had met her at a conference a few months previously. She had made a room full of young women slack-jawed with her tale of making it in the fashion world, despite having zero contacts, being 5ft 4in and a size 24. Here, I thought, was an interesting role model for our ‘snowflake’ times.
And so we photographed her, let her loose with a bunch of clothes we had called in, stumbled upon a brilliant picture of her in a jade green body suit and that was it. We sent it to the printers.
Since monthly magazines work roughly three months ahead of schedule, we thought no more of it until, 12 weeks later, while out at a meeting, I got an email from my features director. ‘We just socialed the Tess Holliday cover,’ it read. ‘And it’s all kicking off.’
She wasn’t joking. In the back of a cab on my way back to the office I opened up Cosmo’s Instagram page – generally a place of benign commentary. But not that day. Or the day after.
Or even many weeks after that.
‘THIS is what the world needs to see! Bravo’. ‘Disgusting – unsubscribing NOW!’ It went on and on: a see-saw of high emotion. Raging sides with no middle ground. This, it turned out, was just the beginning. Over the following weeks the magazine found itself caught between the jubilation of the body positivity movement and the fury of everyone else. I was hauled in front of the public to explain myself on Good Morning Britain, while word reached me that a very senior executive at the company I worked for was appalled by what I had done. Four days later a sinister handwritten letter arrived at the office instructing me that I needed to ‘watch my back’, since I’d chosen to put a ‘whale’ on the cover of a magazine.
I was bewildered. The truth was, this cover was in no way an attempt to force a belief system on anyone. It had merely been an opportunity to open up debate about something the world seemed nervous to talk about: women’s bodies. But here’s the thing: no one wanted a debate. What they wanted was winners on one side; losers on the other.
For a while it looked like the body positivity movement was making progress. The 2019 catwalk shows started to fill with models who had juicy bottoms and breasts that wobbled – Ashley Graham (far left), Paloma Elsesser, Alva Clare. The same year, mass fashion brands such as Reformation, Anthropologie and Veronica Beard introduced real plus-size ranges for women who went beyond a size 14. US store Old Navy made a whole song and dance about it with a million-dollar campaign, Bodequality, to launch its plus-size range. Celebrities came out in support, talking about finally loving and accepting their bodies, just the way they were. Finally there were poster girls – Mindy Kaling, Amy Schumer, Chrissy Teigen – for a movement that ten years earlier had had no name. It looked as though there had been a victory. Then things went quiet.
This season larger models were noticeably absent from most of the fashion shows. Just a few years ago, big brands such as
Fendi made plus-size models a firm feature of their runway shows. Now, however, they all look distinctly leaner. Out of 49 major
spring/summer campaigns for this season, only one (St John) featured a midsize (10 to 14) model. This is in stark contrast to just a few seasons ago. In spring 2021, for example, plus-size model Precious Lee (opposite, top right) was the face of Versace. This season it is actress Emily Ratajkowski (far right).
But it’s not just fashion that appears to have forgotten the body positivity movement. Half of Hollywood seems to be shrinking, thanks to a self-administered diabetic injection called Ozempic, which leads to rapid weight loss. What’s more, the latest cosmetic surgery fad – buccal fat removal (which essentially involves having fat hoovered out of your cheeks) is on the rise. A recent image of actress Lea Michele suggests she may have had the procedure done, while others suspect supermodel Bella Hadid and actress Zoë Kravitz have also undergone buccal fat removal. You’ve got to hand it to Chrissy Teigen: at least she has admitted to having had it.
And then there’s the literal vanishing act of the body positivity movement’s most prominent role models. Amy Schumer recently admitted to having had liposuction; Mindy Kaling just lost 40lb, while Rebel Wilson, Melissa McCarthy and Adele all appear to be disappearing with each passing day. As for Old Navy’s all-singing, all-dancing Bodequality campaign? The brand quietly cut back its inclusive sizing in store during the pandemic.
This is not how it should have gone. Because here’s what happens
‘CELEBRITIES TALKED ABOUT FINALLY LOVING AND ACCEPTING THEIR BODIES’
with movements. Slowly, bit by bit, they seep into the everyday. Movements that are conducted not with rage or venom or the desire to enact vengeance, become, over time, the norm. Yet the problem with the current strand of activism is that it leaves no room for debate or individual expression. It is all rage and anger and jostling for power. You are either on the right side of history or the wrong side. It’s that simple. And so, with no room or time to gather your own beliefs, individuals and particularly corporations cling to that side which roars the loudest. In doing so, they smother their own personal interpretation of the matter in hand.
The body positivity movement (and yes, I know, you are supposed to call it the ‘body neutrality’ movement now, which further underlines my point about the rigidity of today’s activism) was one of the loudest and most cage-rattling campaigns of our times. And yet…it seems to have disappeared without so much as a whimper. When I look back at that Cosmo cover almost half a decade later, I still wonder why
Tess never became the face of a major beauty brand. I also wonder why that issue of the magazine, which had more public support and press coverage than any magazine of the past ten years, in the end sold less than the issues with reality TV stars on the front.
Did we really change anything at all? Or was it all one big fat lie to the world – and to ourselves?