Unless you’ve lived under a rock for the past few months, you have definitely heard Meghan Trainor’s upbeat hit, “All About That Bass.” On the first few listens, the song seems to promote a body positive message, with Trainor crooning, “every inch of you is perfect from the bottom to the top.” Unfortunately, Trainor delivers this message in an exclusionary way by mocking thin women. We’ve been told that fat-shaming is wrong and we need to respect women of all body types. Trainor fails to recognize that cruelty toward thin women is just another form of body-shaming with equally destructive consequences.
I find it difficult to join the bandwagon championing Trainor as a pioneer in positive body image when her song has lines like, “go ahead and tell them skinny bitches that.” If Trainor’s mother told her, “don’t worry about your size,” then why is she saying that “boys like a little more booty to hold at night?” This is a step in the wrong direction. Not worrying about your size means acceptance of all sizes, big and small, not skinny-shaming in favor of a new body ideal.
Trainor is responding to a culture with specific ideals of attractiveness. It’s hard for her song not to resonate with many young women who’ve been bombarded with images of skinny women and consistently told that only stick-thin people are beautiful. Trainor’s target is misplaced. The problem is not skinny girls, but our obsession with our bodies and our perfectionist attitudes toward attractiveness. Songs like “All About That Bass” are hardly liberating. Instead of tearing down the idea that our value comes from outward appearances, she creates a new ideal against which we can compare ourselves. Trainor is trying to “bring booty back” to replace “thinness” as the standard of attractiveness. How does that message affect thin girls? It’s hurtful to be told that your body is offensive, regardless of your dress size.
There is no legitimacy to a song about body positivity if it only inverts who is being targeted as unattractive. Body positivity is something that we all need more of. Our disturbing fascination with the physical has caused nothing short of a malaise. We are all forcing ourselves to suffer so that we can try to live up to some attainable ideal. The point here is that such an ideal is irrelevant. Regardless of what the unfair expectation for beauty is, it is harmful.
Taking the focus away from what we look like is the best course of action if we want to make any attempt at moving forward. We put our bodies under the microscope, obsessed with declaring people “overweight” or “too skinny.” There is some satisfaction that we receive from trying to prove that our size is the one that is acceptable.
In “All About That Bass,” Trainor is seeking validation for her larger size by belittling the thinner female body. If they truly wish to promote positive body image, Trainor and other artists should send a message that we are all “perfect,” regardless of our waistlines or how we look in the mirror.