Hey y’all!
I created this presentation in December of 2020. Below are a couple of discussion/thinking cues.
TikTok’s Influence
TikTok is a unique social media platform. It surely has its pros and cons, but I’m noting its contribution to the body positivity movement. The video platform’s users are often accused of being “too comfortable” on the app. As I have previously mentioned on the blog, there are different sectors of TikTok. Communities with shared interests and values can make you feel safe and bring out your authentic self, even through a screen. During the initial quarantine, there was a crop of TikTok content creators that begun body positivity trends! There were whole TikTok sounds dedicated to women of all shapes, sizes, backgrounds, and beliefs loving the skin that they were in, shamelessly. This was one of my favorite TikTok eras, hence why it opens the presentation.
“Discussing Projections”
Wow, this feels like forever ago. Let me provide context. These two beautiful and talented women, Chloe Bailey on the left and Lizzo on the right, were being attacked at this time (late 2020) for being proud of their bodies. Things really came to a head for Chloe Bailey when she went on Instagram Live to defend herself for posting her own body. Click here to watch a clip of the live. And if you know Lizzo, you know people talk about her just to talk about her. The inciting incident that landed her in this PowerPoint was her posting, on TikTok of all places, what she ate within a day. At the time Lizzo was doing a smoothie cleanse to remedy gastrointestinal issues. Nothing more. But people started attacking Lizzo, accusing her of hating her body.
Both women faced ungrounded backlash. Chloe was being called all sorts of degrading, disgusting, misogynistic terms and being told that she “wasn’t being herself.” All this because certain people took it upon themselves to separate her from her sensuality. Instagram comments and low-grade Twitter accounts were claiming that she was “doing it for attention. ” Others claimed her as their figurehead of modesty, and now deemed her “ruined.” Lizzo was accused by the plus-sized community of betraying them. People saw her smoothie cleanse and how happy she was with it and immediately assumed she was doing it to lose weight. Lizzo was said to be a traitor, another pusher of diet culture, and a detriment to the body positivity movement.
Both of these women were projected upon. They were told what they could and could not do with their bodies. They were made to feel as though their bodies had to fit someone else’s agendas.
Subjectivity
This slide displays how beauty is an ever-moving target. What people say about your body, and what you think of it, are subjective opinions drawn from the environment. This is also a great time to mention, not all opinions are worth sharing ?
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