Body-positive? Not even close. Trainor’s tune not only bashes skinny girls but emphasizes the approval of men.
When I first heard All About That Bass by Meghan Trainor on the radio the catchy rhythm caught my attention long enough to hear, “Every inch of you is perfect from the body to the top.” Awwww! I thought. That was followed up with lyrics such as “Yeah, my momma she told me don’t worry about your size.” Could this be the happy body anthem for anyone to enjoy? After listening to the whole thing the answer was clear-a resounding “NO.”
At first glance, this song seems to be about how girls shouldn’t worry about their size and how being larger than a size two is no more a crime than using extra toilet paper in a public bathroom because you’re not paying for it. Yes, I agree. Some of us were born to be larger numbers and there is nothing we can do about it. Just like some of us were born with the potential to have thigh gaps and some of us weren’t (Gasp! You didn’t know it’s more about physiology than working out?! Watch this.). So right on, Miss Trainor. Or so I thought.
She boasts how she can “shake it, shake it, like she’s supposed to do,” and how she has “all the right junk in all the right places.” Wait a minute. I thought she was just talking about how she wasn’t supposed to be a certain size. Now she’s saying that there is a type of “right junk” and “right places” it should be? That doesn’t sound accepting at all. The criticism continues when she calls out “skinny b*tches.” I’m sorry, but adding “I’m just kidding” to your song does not erase that you insulted an entire demographic of women. Some women won’t ever dip below a certain size and some women won’t ever go above a certain size. It’s pretty hypocritical to start slamming magazines for using Photoshop and then you yourself slam women who can’t control that when you look at them refer to them as “skinny b*tches.”
The Daily Mail recently published an article about the response of “normal” sized women to a Victoria Secret ad that used the words “Perfect Body.”
Under this image, The Daily Mail used this caption: “The Victoria’s Secret ad, which used ten waif-like models under the slogan The Perfect ‘Body’.”
Waif-like? Skinny b*tches? If this is how women choose to treat each other then it’s no wonder why the rest of society feels it’s okay for them to weigh in too (no pun intended, but I’ll take it). This body war reminds me of the mommy war where mothers who choose to stay home are criticized by mothers who choose to continue their careers and vice versa. We are all on the same team! One is not better than the other, they are simply different.
If these women were trying to help women feel better about themselves, they were choosy in which they “helped.” Here are a few excerpts of what they said:
“I can’t see how women or men would find the super skinny look attractive.”
“This is what a real woman looks like.” (Referring to herself.)
“I don’t want to be super skinny — I think that looks unattractive and wouldn’t want to lose my curves.”
Using words like “normal” and “real” to refer to women bigger than these models is wrong. Every one of these women in the article, VS models and the others, are both “normal” and “real.” I’ve known women who look like this and are not models, some by choice and effort and some because they were born that way and nothing they try to do to their body can change it. If bigger (again, I mean bigger than these models) women feel insulted that their body types are not referred to as “perfect” then I don’t understand how they can expect smaller women to not take offense when their bodies are referred to as something not “normal” or “real.”
So this tune isn’t about body acceptance for all sizes. It’s about body pride for women with larger bodies and in a way is portraying a message along the lines of, “My larger body is better than your skinny body because I have the right body that men enjoy.”
You read that correctly. With all those harmonies it’s hard to catch the line that says, “Men like a little more booty to hold at night.” The “mama” that Trainor is quoting is one terrible lady! She’s saying there is no reason to worry about your size not because you don’t need to and bodies have the right to come in different sizes, but because MEN aren’t necessarily worried about your size. In fact, they’d like it if women were a little bigger! The mentioned article does the same thing when one woman ends her statement with this gem from her partner: “There’s nothing sexy about cuddling up to a bag of bones.”
What now. So now this song isn’t about liking your body because it’s your body, or liking your body because you find it superior to skinny bodies, or even liking your body because society tells us it’s not a body to like. This song is about liking your body because it happens to be the body that men like. It’s like this song is on an elevator ride to the earth’s core and the up button won’t work.
The moral of the story is this-if we want to stop society from judging our bodies so harshly we should set an example by stopping our harsh judgements first. This goes for all of us, all sizes. Your size is not about what society finds beautiful, what gives us confidence, or even what we find beautiful. It’s about being healthy enough to do the things and experience life the way we find it beautiful. I don’t advocate anorexia and I don’t advocate the “big is beautiful” mentality either. We shouldn’t be striving for aesthetics, we should be striving for functionality and longevity. What good is being confident in your size 18 body when you have high cholesterol and can’t play in the sand box with your kids? What good is being able to fit into a double zero dress when you can’t finish a 5K because your body can’t cope?
That’s what we need to focus on here. Forget what you want to look like. Forget what you think other people (MEN) want you to look like. Forget about your right to be whatever size you want. Don’t forget that while your body can be a work of art, at its core it’s really just your paintbrush to create your masterpiece.
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