How should we feel when body positivity influencers start losing weight?

Body positivity influencers made plus-size people everywhere feel represented. That is, until popular weight loss drugs declared thin is in. Meredith Clark asks content creators and activists if we should be mad when our favorite plus-size influencers lose weight, or if fatphobia is really to blame

Should we be mad when our favorite plus size influencers lose weight? (iStock)

“We never stopped advocating for ourselves, but it seems like everyone else did,” said plus-size model Tabria Majors, after she noticed a concerning trend on her social media feed.

She wasn’t the only woman to take note. In recent months, the plus-size community has grappled with feelings of abandonment as some of the influencers they’ve followed online — whose content typically challenged weight stigma — have begun to quite visibly shrink.

“I feel like we’re living back in the early 2000s,” curve model Raeann Langas told her followers after witnessing an uptick in fatphobic rhetoric on the internet.

Famous plus-size model Tess Holliday shared a video of herself lying in bed, writing over the clip: “Seeing another plus-size influencer lose weight just 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 didn’t “want to be fat anymore.”

It seems that there’s no escaping the rise of “thin is in” messaging currently permeating social media, fashion, and the wellness industry. Thanks to popular injectable medications like Type 2 diabetes drug Ozempic, which is often prescribed off-label for weight loss, and weight-loss medication Wegovy, it’s never been easier to achieve a smaller body.

But, for those who’ve felt represented by the body positivity movement, witnessing a number of plus-size influencers undergo their own weight loss transformations has triggered feelings of betrayal and abandonment. Some see it as tossing aside the community they’ve cultivated online, while others worry that their content has turned fatphobic, as they equate weight loss to good “health.”

Remi Bader, an influencer known for her candid reviews of plus-size clothing, recently set Reddit snark pages aflame when she declined 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 influx of body shaming.

“Every day I wake up and realize that I am fortunate to do what I do, and wouldn’t change it for the world. Yet, when you go online and choose not to set your own boundaries, whatever those may be, people get very used to feeling that they are obligated to know every detail about you,” Bader wrote in an essay published in Nylon. “Offering up my entire life became the expectation. Viewers felt entitled, and I felt indebted.”

Unsurprisingly, her decision to keep details surrounding her weight loss private sparked backlash from fans who’d been following her body positivity posts for quite some time. One Instagram user claimed that 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.

Influencer Remi Bader took a stand when she declined to comment on speculation surrounding her fitness journey (Getty Images)

For Jordan Underwood, a Brooklyn-based content creator and plus-size model, it isn’t that Bader has chosen to forgo personal details about 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 both unfair to her and to the movement,” Underwood, who uses they/he pronouns, told The Independent. Rather, it presents somewhat of a moral dilemma when a plus-size influencer who no longer identifies as a part of the community they’ve built online continues to profit from that same platform.

It’s easy to argue that thinness has always been in. 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 learned that being size inclusive was profitable, and a number of fashion labels expanded their size ranges online and in stores. But as “heroin chic” hit a resurgence in 2022, only to be followed by the popularization of weight loss drugs, suddenly body positivity seemed to no longer be a focus.

Just one year after launching extended sizing, Old Navy removed its plus-size clothing from retail store locations, while LOFT discontinued its plus size collection entirely to cut pandemic costs. Brands deserting the promises they made 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 began to do the same.

“Every influencer, whether they think of themselves as a business or not, they sort of are in some ways,” said Virgie Tovar, an activist and Forbes contributor, whose work focuses on the plus-size market and workplace weight discrimination. Social media has grown into an industry in its own right, according to Tovar.

But like with any business, having a clear set of values is key to maintaining loyal followers. “What’s challenging is when you’re an influencer and you put forth 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 series of actions and accountability that are expected.”

When an influencer decides to rebrand their business — like focusing on wellness instead of rejecting the weight loss industry — there’s a due diligence needed to your online community, some of who don’t agree with diet culture or fitness content. “I put the metaphorical dollar in this bucket, and now you’ve switched the label on the bucket, and you’re taking that dollar and you’re leveraging it to do something that I never wanted my money to be used for,” she said.

Content creator Alex Ochoa, known online as @MadeByAlexNYC, became the subject of 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 set, along with the caption: “POV: Deciding to lose weight because you love yourself.”

The comments section was flooded with fans criticizing Ochoa for seemingly insinuating that the only way to achieve health or happiness is by losing weight. For other customers, it was even more frustrating to see a business owner walk back the very ideals of self-love and acceptance they had built into their brand.

Thanks to popular injectable medications like Ozempic and Wegovy, whose side effects include weight loss, it’s never been easier to achieve a smaller body (REUTERS)

“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 take steps to do so, that’s not a betrayal to me,” Cindy Noir, an Atlanta-based content creator and personal development speaker, told The Independent. “Betraying is when you are changing your body to be  superficial, and they begin downplaying or putting down the body you once had, or putting down people who are still a part of the fat community.”

If “body positivity” was the mainstreamed buzzword of the 2010s, then “parasocial” — a term used to describe the familiar way mass media consumers interact with media figures — has taken its place in this decade. Social media platforms were built for forming parasocial relationships by making internet personalities more accessible than ever before. We place influencers — relatively normal people — on a pedestal, only to be disappointed when they inevitably let us down.

“It’s beyond just plus-size influencers, but the parasocial bond between social media content creators and their platform is so dangerous,” said Cindy.

Indeed, we should hold certain influencers accountable when their platform has been rebranded into 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 have control over is how we consume their content, if at all.

When scrolling through social media and coming 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 recentering on where exactly these conversations on body positivity are taking place. Yes, social media has proven to be an important organizing tool, but the real way to combat our current “thin is in” cultural swing is by building community offline too.

“It’s important for us to say: ‘What world do I want to create? Do I want to create a world in which people are on medication for the rest of their lives in order to suppress their body weight? Or do I believe in a world where biodiversity is real and it matters?’” Tovar said.

“And I think that most of us know the answer to that question.”