THERE’S been much celebration recently over the supposed death of the body positivity movement. Its detractors, usually conservative-leaning, gleefully point to the evolution of fashion advertising campaigns as proof that body ideals within our culture have undergone a reset.
Take Calvin Klein. In 2019, the brand faced a backlash after it unveiled an underwear billboard featuring a clinically obese rapper, Chika Oranika. Despite many mainstream women’s publications’ attempts to frame such imagery as ‘inclusive’, the wider public remained unconvinced.
Fast forward to March this year, and Calvin Klein’s spring campaign features actress Dakota Johnson looking incredibly slender and toned, much like the CK adverts of the 1990s. While it’s a refreshing sight, it’s difficult to shake the feeling that the complete demise of body positivity – and what it was intended to mean – is a bad thing.
Body positivity didn’t always equate to ‘overweight’, you see. It emerged in the late 2000s to early 2010s as a corrective to extreme thinness – a lifeline for many girls and young women growing up in that era. Yet with the concurrent rise of the ‘woke’ movement it lost its way. Now, with the advent of Ozempic and visibly transformed celebrities, it seems that the very culture it intended to usurp is making a comeback.
The glamorisation of extreme thinness took hold in the 1990s with the ‘heroin chic’ aesthetic and persisted into the 2000s. The fashion industry was also becoming increasingly globalised, and designers sought to keep the costs of international runway shows down by using one standardised ‘sample size’. Models were expected to wear a UK 4-6 (US size 0-2), prompting designers to select teenagers whose narrow shoulders and hips could typically fit into and flatter the clothes.
But even among these young models, the pressure to fit into such a small size led many to undereat. Although few would admit to it in fear of losing modelling work, the proof lay in plain sight, and there were even a handful of malnutrition-related deaths in the industry. In 2006, 22-year-old Luisel Ramos died from heart failure after reportedly surviving on lettuce and Diet Coke for months on end. That same year, 21-year-old Ana Carolina Reston died after a weeks-long starvation diet of just apples and tomatoes.
The fixation with extreme thinness didn’t stop there and was exacerbated by the deployment of increasingly sophisticated Photoshop. In 2009, Ralph Lauren was forced to apologise for a notorious advertisement in Japan, in which the body of 5ft 10in model Filippa Hamilton was digitally altered to such an extent that her hips were narrower than her head.
A parallel weight obsession ran rife throughout 2000s celebrity culture. Nicole Richie, Mary Kate Olsen, Lindsay Lohan and countless other stars were often photographed looking incredibly frail. One couldn’t even escape the cultural fixation on thinness when turning on the radio. Lily Allen’s song The Fear, for example, contained the lyric, ‘Everything is cool as long as I’m getting thinner’, and Lady Gaga’s 2009 Fashion declared, ‘I live to be model thin’. Both women have since openly confessed to struggling with bulimia nervosa.
By the early 2010s, the rise of internet platforms such as Tumblr compounded these pressures. Its audience was largely adolescent girls, who are often highly impressionable and can feel anxious about their changing bodies. Online forums promoting anorexia – dubbed ‘pro-ana’ websites – became commonplace, where schoolgirls would swap tips on how to restrict their caloric intake and hide the signs from their parents. But, in the midst of this online toxicity, a counter-movement was emerging: body positivity.
In an effort to fight back, online pages celebrating healthier, more natural body types, like that of Marilyn Monroe, materialised. Offline, public awareness campaigns like ‘Say No to Size Zero’ gained traction, encouraging governments to launch inquiries into the widespread eating disorders within the modelling industry. In 2012, Israel became the first country to introduce laws requiring that models have a minimum BMI of 18.5, and that advertisers fully disclose any photo retouching.
Mainstream culture followed suit. Kim Kardashian emerged as a TV star, sporting a noticeably fuller figure than her Beverly Hills peers at the time. In the fashion world, momentum was also building. In 2011, Vogue Italia – always slightly more permissive of curvier figures than its Atlantic-facing sisters – featured three ‘plus size’ models on its cover. Hitherto, ‘plus size’ models (i.e. anything above a sample size) were restricted to ‘commercial’ modelling, but this was shot with the prestige of a high fashion editorial and quickly sold out.
In 2015, American model Ashley Graham featured in a swimwear advert for the brand ‘Swimsuits for All’, which appeared in Sports Illustrated. Graham was soon invited to appear on chat shows and give TED Talks, establishing her position as a body diversity spokesperson.
At the time, it even looked as if the movement might produce its own cluster of ‘supermodels’. But, like so many social movements before it, body positivity was devoured by extremes. By the 2010s, it had been captured by the social justice project – later rebranded as ‘woke’ – and morphed into ‘fat acceptance’. Rather than representing an aspirational version of a ‘healthy woman’, it became yet another stigmatised identity, sitting alongside a roster of other grievances along the lines of race, gender, and sexuality.
Soon enough, the waistlines of ‘plus size’ models, and consequently the term itself, ballooned to include dangerously overweight individuals. In 2018, UK Cosmopolitan chose American model Tess Holliday as its cover girl. With a BMI of 40 and a dress size of UK 28 (US 24), her measurements fell well outside the range of the average ‘curve’ model at the time. Predictably, Holliday’s popularity among left-leaning publications wasn’t limited to her weight, and the conversation extended to her sexual identity, which she described as ‘pansexual’.
This unrecognisable version of body positivity also acquired its own ‘phobia’: fatphobia. Before this, no formal term had been needed; anyone with a heart knew it was wrong to bully overweight people.
Yet, as this term invaded the collective lexicon, it was flung around with increasingly political and even litigious authority. Public rows between activists and budget airlines erupted, with companies being accused of ‘systemic fatphobia’ as their space-saving seating wasn’t built to accommodate ‘bigger bodies’. These disputes regularly went viral online, but outside a small minority of radical activists, few were sympathetic.
From around 2021 onwards, growing fatigue with wokeism and the intensifying culture wars helped deliver the change of administration in the 2024 US Presidential election. It was clear that the era of strident DEI was over, and with it, body positivity.
Its demise is, in many ways, a dreadful shame. What was once a source of hope and normality for women living in a starvation-obsessed culture will be remembered as synonymous with obesity. And there are increasing signs that the pendulum could be swinging back.
One merely needs to look at social media to see memes such as ‘Girl Dinner’ crop up. It’s intended to be a humorous way of describing a slapdash, snack-type meal cobbled together when cooking seems too effortful. But a look at the meagre portions posing as a full meal – alongside other videos promoting the ‘perfect body’ – reminds one of the old guilt culture surrounding food consumption.
While memes may seem innocuous enough, the advent of Ozempic is ushering in the gaunt look not seen since the 2000s. While it was created to assist diabetics with blood sugar control, the elite class quickly grasped hold of the drug for its weight loss properties. In the last few years, there has been a visible shrinkage in Hollywood, with celebrities such as Olivia Wilde, Alexa Demie, and Kelly Osbourne showcasing hollow cheeks and an overall sickly look.
In 2026, we find ourselves in uncertain territory. Will Ozempic remain popular even though its mass accessibility means it is less likely to be a status symbol? The increasing price of the drug and other GLP-1s casts doubt on this theory. Either way, one can only hope that the past three decades have taught us something and that the glorification of extremes, from emaciation to obesity, will never come back into style.
