Fat liberation vs body positivity: How brands and influencers are reshaping the movement

Australia Broadcast Center

2 days ago

Tess Royale Clancy has made it their mission to "centre fat joy".
The activist and advocate aims to reject the stigma associated with living in a fat body and encourage support, confidence and community for "fat babes" via advocacy work and social events.
But changing the conversation starts with changing the words used to describe bigger bodies.
For example, the word "fat", which has long been used as an insult, has been reclaimed by Clancy and other activists, who use it with pride.
"It's a descriptor; it shouldn't have anything negative [projected] onto it," Clancy says.
But for Clancy and others, it's a very different story when it comes to the much-touted phrase "body positivity".
Widely circulated on social media, by celebrities and in the news, the concept is meant to encompass self-love and acceptance.
But experts and advocates say it has been co-opted by brands and influencers who want to appear inclusive but fail to follow through.
So, how did body positivity go from a radical movement to a marketing tactic?
While body positivity is often thought of as a social media phenomenon, its history goes back half a century before the invention of Instagram.
The first social and political movements about the rights of fat people began in the US in the 1960s.
In 1967, fat activists staged a "fat-in" in New York's Central Park, during which around 500 people protested fatphobia, burning diet books and carrying signs.
Two years later, also in New York City, a young engineer named Bill Fabrey grew angry at the fatphobia he saw directed at his wife, Joyce. Together with a journalist who had written about anti-fat bias, he formed the National Association to Aid Fat Americans, now the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance.
Around the same time, fat activism was gaining traction in Los Angeles. A group of feminists, many of whom were queer and women of colour, formed the Fat Underground and published their Fat Liberation Manifesto in 1973.
"We believe that fat people are fully entitled to human respect and recognition … We demand equal rights for fat people in all aspects of life," it read.
The manifesto denounced the "reducing industries" associated with dieting. It also aligned the struggle for fat liberation with those of "other oppressed groups against classism, racism, sexism, ageism, financial exploitation, imperialism and the like".
By the 1990s, fat activists were protesting on many fronts, from picketing the White House to rallying against fatphobic advertising. Fat liberation movements began to form in other parts of the world, too.
With the rise of social media in the 2000s, the concept of body positivity, which drew on the ideals of the fat liberation movement, began to emerge in hashtags, blogs, and magazines.
Platforms like Tumblr and LiveJournal offered a safe space for plus-size writers, models, and commentators to share their experiences of fatphobia.
Many of these conversations sparked change, from magazine covers featuring fat bodies to viral campaigns urging clothing brands to offer more inclusive sizing.
Since then, celebrities like Adele, Lizzo, Mindy Kaling and Jameela Jamil have spoken out about authentically embracing body positivity.
Studies have also shown that some exposure to body-positive content on social media can improve body image, especially to counteract idealised or unrealistic bodies depicted online.
Yet the body positivity movement looks very different today from its early activist-led origins, explains Tess Royale Clancy.
"I think body positivity is a very individualised approach to feeling comfortable in our bodies … [It] doesn't look at the systemic issues that discriminate against fat people," they say.
"It kind of just leaves it up to the individual to be OK in their body, but how can you be OK in your body when the world is constantly discriminating against you?
"I have experienced quite a lot of fatphobia and anti-fat bias. I may not feel as comfortable in my body as I'd like to be all the time, but I truly do believe that I don't have a hatred for my body, that that has always been put on me by people, by society and their views of what fatness is."
A 2021 La Trobe University survey found that weight stigma is pervasive in Australia, with 38 per cent of respondents agreeing that "obese bodies are disgusting" and 29 per cent saying they would give up 10 years of life to be able to effortlessly maintain their ideal weight.
Almost half of the people surveyed who identified as fat said they had changed their behaviour to avoid unwanted attention due to their weight.
A 2024 ABC investigation into weight stigma found those who had experienced fatphobia, especially in medical settings, felt judged, neglected and victimised. Research has also found that societal stigma about weight leads to negative health outcomes, including high blood pressure, inflammation and increased levels of cortisol.
For advocates like Clancy, this is all the more reason to highlight systemic fatphobia and return to the concept of fat liberation.
They say that unlike conversations about body positivity, the Fat Liberation Manifesto sends a clearer and more vital message "that fat people are entitled to human respect and recognition".
"That's something that we don't often have," they say.
Jane Williams, a public health researcher at the University of Sydney, says body positivity puts the onus on individuals to monitor "the way you talk to yourself about your body", which is still ultimately spending time and energy worrying about weight.
It's also more likely to drive people to unhealthy weight loss tactics, she says.
"We all know that it is very difficult to change the shape and size of your body," Dr Williams says.
"Encouraging people to make lifestyle changes without really supporting them … or understanding why that might not be possible or desirable — [that] becomes harmful."
April Hélène-Horton, an advocate, model and 2025 ambassador for the Butterfly Foundation, says today's understanding of body positivity serves the beauty and fashion industries more than individuals.
"Body positivity as most people know it is something that's being given to us as an antidote to feeling bad about yourself," Hélène-Horton tells ABC Radio National's God Forbid.
"The phrase has been co-opted and misconstrued as the idea that we accept ourselves without any kind of nuance or inward [reflection].
"The body positivity movement was originally started by queer Black activists and not established for the purpose of making everybody feel better about the flaws that the beauty industry has told us that we have."
One of the first high-profile branding campaigns to incorporate body positivity was Dove's Real Beauty campaign in 2004, which featured a photoshoot of six ordinary women (all slim) in their underwear. The campaign was hugely successful and inspired other brands to follow suit.
Many of these campaigns have been criticised as inauthentic, especially as some of the brands using diverse bodies in their advertising did not make products designed for bigger bodies.
At the same time, body positivity was embraced on social media — but not necessarily by fat people.
Clancy says the movement has been overtaken by "thin white women" who want to "normalise that their stomachs aren't always flat all the time".
"I see a lot of that on social media. We talk about body positivity a lot, but it's more about that individual view, rather than, 'Hey, what's happening in the world that makes people not like their bodies?'"
While they encourage self-love in all bodies, they say that this shift alienates the people the body positivity movement was originally designed to help.
Other advocates have spoken out about this too: singer Lizzo said in 2021 that body positivity had been "co-opted by all bodies" and had become about celebrating "medium and small girls".
In a 2023 essay, UK writer, content creator, and body image advocate Stephanie Yeboah wrote "the mid-size movement has killed body positivity". Actress and body-positive influencer Georgia Sky told Dazed Magazine she felt "kicked out" of the movement and victimised by "TikTok's body shamers".
Research has found that Instagram content labelled as "body positive" overwhelmingly features "lean, white, cis-gendered individuals" with a "remarkable absence" of people who are fat, queer, racially diverse or disabled.
For Tess Royale Clancy, body positivity in its current state doesn't go far enough to support marginalised people.
"I've gone away from body positivity and into fat liberation because it doesn't actually address any systematic oppression," they say.
"Fat liberation is more of a community-mindset approach … It is more political; it is about changing the systems that oppress us and recognising that our liberation is linked to other liberations."
April Hélène-Horton says the fat liberation movement represents "what body positivity was meant to be".
"A fat body becomes political the minute that it stops apologising for itself and experiences joy," she says.
"That is what I try to do: to allow people to see that I experience joy and that I have success and that my fatness isn't something that holds me back. I think that's resistance and I think that's political."
Clancy also embraces fat joy, both in the communities they have established and in their personal life.
"I get to float in the ocean. I'm so good at floating because I'm so buoyant — that's fat joy for me; being able to wear the clothes I like and have a style that I like is fat joy; my community is fat joy," they say.
"I have a group of fat friends … and when we get together, we have amazing laughs and our bellies jiggle. It's so beautiful to have people in your life that have the same experience as you.
"I really do see a lot of goodness in fatness, which I think in this world is quite radical."