Allira was a fierce ‘body positivity’ advocate. Then the movement soured

It’s difficult to argue with the tenets of the body positivity movement. Self-love, improved representation, dismantling weight bias – these are things most people can get behind.

For Allira Potter, an Adelaide-based content creator, being part of the plus-size community used to drive her social media presence. But, like most people, her body has changed over time.

She fell in love with running and indoor fitness competitions, activities that helped her feel stronger, aesthetic changes aside. With that, her content evolved. But not all of her followers were happy about it.

“There was very much a vibe shift,” Potter says. “People were commenting: ‘You’ve lost a lot of weight. What are you doing?’ … A few influencer pages picked it up, and that’s where the negativity started, in terms of people saying, ‘she’s on a GLP-1 [weight loss medication]’. But so what if I am? Why is it anyone’s business?”

As the negativity intensified, Potter’s relationship with the body positivity movement (BPM) shifted. The community’s values no longer aligned with her own, she says, as more people seemingly tried to separate self-love and body autonomy from simply caring for your body.

“It can all live within the same space,” Potter says. “I understand that my platform was completely built on body positivity – just being happy and proud in a bigger body. But there comes a point where if my health is impacted, then I need to make change. We should be able to make change without the wider community judging you.”

Potter isn’t the only one to distance themselves from the movement. Other content creators like Gabriella Lascano, Remi Jo and Alex Light have either completely removed themselves, or shifted to a more nuanced version of body positivity.

The Butterfly Foundation’s education initiatives director Danni Rowlands says this is one of the trickiest moments she’s witnessed over decades working in the body image space.

“It’s an absolute minefield out there,” she says. “It feels like it’s moved back to black-and-white thinking in terms of how literal the message has become.”

So, where exactly is the BPM now, and what does its fate mean for our understanding of body image moving forward?

Where it began

Body image has long been a hot topic. American activists in the 1960s, many of whom were queer and women of colour, held “fat-ins” – protests against fatphobia and systemic weight bias. These protests would become part of what’s known as the fat liberation movement (FLM).

Much of this culminated in the publication of the 1973 Fat Liberation Manifesto, a radical document that called for an end to body-based discrimination and declared war on diet culture. Fat acceptance, it argued, was a feminist and civil rights issue.

The BPM evolved from this radical movement, Rowlands says, though with key differences. While the FLM aims to mobilise activists to dismantle systemic stereotypes, the BPM is more individualised and image-based. Social media and “selfie culture” have played significant roles in this, offering platforms for people to celebrate all types of bodies and share their own experiences with stigma.

“The movement has very much been used as the vehicle to increase representation; increase body diversity; to ensure that people, women in particular and queer women too, of all body types are seen and represented in media, advertising and modelling,” Rowlands says.

Dr Natalie Jovanovski, vice chancellor’s senior research fellow at RMIT’s School of Health and Biomedical Sciences and Social Equity Research Centre, says the BPM tends to consider beauty as part of its activism, whereas the FLM is generally quite critical of standard beauty practices.

“In the BPM, the message is we can all be beautiful regardless of weight, body, hair, scars, cellulite. There’s still this retained emphasis on beauty that we don’t really see as much in the FLM,” says Jovanovski, who wrote Diet Culture and Counterculture.

How it evolved

As the BPM grew, so too did body representation. Bigger bodies graced magazine covers and catwalks, and retailers expanded size options. Celebrities like Lizzo and Ashley Graham celebrated their size online, encouraging others to do the same.

However, something darker began bubbling beneath the surface.

“The BPM has been commercialised by diet and wellness culture,” Rowlands says. “Bodies are seen as commodities from which profits can be made. There’s this idea that people can buy a positive body image with the right training, the right green juice, the right supplement … It has become all about how you look when health is actually multifaceted. How we look is part of our identity, it’s not our whole identity.

“There’s still work being done at that systemic level, but what gets the most attention is the stuff on the individual level, which is where industry and brands can come in hot and make lots of money from us.”

Meanwhile, weight stigma remains common in Australia. In a 2021 La Trobe University survey, 38 per cent of respondents agreed that “obese bodies are disgusting”, and 29 per cent said they would give up “10 years of life to be able to effortlessly maintain their ideal weight”.

Tess Royale Clancy, fat liberation activist and co-founder of plus-size collective Radically Soft, says the movement has also been co-opted by thin, white women over time, making smaller bodies hyper-visible once again.

“Overall, the movement is no longer about the most marginalised of bodies, and it means that many people in larger bodies do not see themselves as part of this movement,” they say.

Not only are smaller bodies becoming the norm again, but people are actively getting smaller too. Since 2021, the uptake of weight loss medications like Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro (GLP-1 agonist drugs) has seen bodies shrink at an astounding rate. While these drugs can be used for medical purposes, Jovanovski says they have also become part of beautifying practices.

Runway models appear to be shrinking, and celebrities who were once iconic for their curvier bodies (Oprah Winfrey, Amy Schumer) are now revealing their GLP-1 weight loss journeys.

This has, to a large extent, fractured the BPM. On one side, there are those who reject the use of GLP-1s, arguing they encourage a reversal to idealised beauty standards where “smaller is better”. Some even go so far as to judge those who use them, even if they’re being used for non-aesthetic reasons, criticising them for changing their bodies rather than simply embracing them.

On the other side, there are those who consider GLP-1s another option for those seeking a healthier lifestyle who struggle to lose weight naturally. They believe the drugs help demonstrate that obesity is a chronic metabolic disease rather than a failing of willpower.

“The BPM and wanting to change yourself, maybe by losing weight, should coexist,” Potter says. “You can love yourself, but you can also decide to make the change because at the end of the day, that’s a part of your self-love journey.”

Where is it now?

Amid the fracturing, the BPM is suffering an exodus. Many content creators, like Potter, who once revered the movement are now openly critiquing it.

“Body positivity completely ignores the harassment, neglect and real-life violence that happens to people in marginalised bodies in favour of [saying] it’s your mindset that’s stopping you from loving yourself,” Clancy says.

“We’re seeing so many people treat fatness as a problem to be solved.”

Clancy hopes we’ll see a swing back to the tenets of the fat liberation movement – a shift from individual appreciation back to collective, radical change.

Alternatively, Jovanovski says the next frontier for body image could be “body neutrality”, a movement that focuses on feeling neutral about your body rather than constantly positive.

“It would be less image-focused and more focused on messages,” she says. “But body positivity will always be around in some form or another. People with bodies that aren’t socially idealised will always want a platform to connect with others with similar experiences.”

However, Potter – once a BPM stalwart – believes the movement may be on its last legs.

“I feel as though I’m seeing it fizzle out … I was such an advocate for self-love: don’t change anything, don’t conform to what society thinks you should look like. I still advocate for that if it’s how people want to feel. But you can change if you don’t like certain things about yourself.”

For support call the Butterfly National Helpline on 1800 ED HOPE (1800 33 4673) or visit www.butterfly.org.au to chat online or email, 7 days a week, 8am-midnight (AEDT).

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