Hot Girl Summer: how racial justice, fat liberation, and mental health activists are changing the way we talk about bodies

Three years ago, musician Megan Thee Stallion birthed the song, “Hot Girl Summer,” and the title has been floating around in memes and meaning ever since. For some the phrase sparked a personal goal or mantra, for others it brought up questions of racial justice, feminism, and diet industry concerns.

As the phrase grew, so did the pushback from communities who have been historically excluded from the euro-centric definition of “hotness” – including BBIMP (Black, Brown, Indigenous, Melanated People), people with disabilities, and those whose bodies don’t fit into our tight beauty standards, particularly people who identify as female and fat.

This year after enduring 15 months of quarantine in the pandemic, witnessing an awareness shift in racial justice, and understanding that 40% of our population gained weight during lockdowns, the movement continued with celebs and influencers pushing back against who gets to embody a hot girl summer. It became a louder and more fervent sort of call to arms for the Body Positivity and Fat Activists.

This pivot reflects a much larger cultural movement towards body acceptance and a push against diet culture and the diet industry. The way we talk about bodies, food, and fat phobia is changing and the reasons are much more than personal preference.

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RACIAL JUSTICE

In 2020 with a focus on Black lives and racial justice, the historical reasons for a Euro-centric quest to be thin resurfaced. Sabrina Strings, Ph.D., a sociologist at UC Irvine, wrote "Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia" which studies the long relationship between Black and white bodies, and how the push for white women’s thinness and the diet industry sprouted around the same time as the American revolution. “When we're in the colonies, we're noticing that Africans are sensuous. They love sex, and they love food. And for this reason, they tend to be too fat. Europeans, we have rational self-control. This is what makes us the premier race of the world. So in terms of body size, we should be slender, and we should watch what we eat,” Strings said in an interview with NPR.

Messages for white women to control their desires and behaviors increased, so that white people could “articulate new aspects of racial identity.” Strings found that “eating and body size became two of the characteristics that were being used to suggest that these (enslaved Africans) are people who do not deserve freedom.”

Additionally, BMI (body mass index) is based on 1850’s “idealized” Euro white male bodies and was never meant to be an indicator of health, but it continues to marginalize and misrepresent the heath and needs of women, particularly Black women.  “The current BMI cutoffs are based on the imagined “ideal” Caucasian and do not consider a person’s gender or ethnicity.” (Adele Jackson-Gibson for Good Housekeeping)

There’s a lot for society to untangle in the mess of weight stigma, health care and health outcomes, and race. Racial bias, discrimination, anti-fatness and abuse play roles in the documented denial of health care for heavier BBIMP people, they also play into our views of ourselves and others.

SOCIAL MEDIA & FAT LIBERATION

Pinterest recently announced that it will no longer feature weight loss ads. Guided by The National Eating Disorders Association, Pinterest updated its policies after the year+ lockdown of the pandemic when it noticed increased searches on its platform for weight loss, dieting and fitness tips.

"A lot of people are facing challenges related to body image and mental health, particularly as we're emerging from COVID restrictions," says Sarah Bromma, the company's head of policy. "People are now feeling added pressure to rejoin their social circles in person for the first time in a year."

For years organizations like the National Eating Disorders Association have recognized how our society, the diet industry and social media have combined to create a mental health crisis of epic proportions.

We now have quick access to thousands of images of the bodies of peers and influencers, many of which have been filtered or altered, as well as groups, hashtags and comments, and that promote diet culture, anti-fat sentiments, or disordered eating. Studies have pointed to ways that the use of social media has accelerated body dissatisfaction, depression, negative self-image, and disordered eating for people of all shapes and sizes.

But social media companies are driven by algorithms collected from their users and fighting the bias against fatness is an ongoing struggle.

Simply using the word “fat” in a hashtag cues the algorithm to send weight loss and diet-based ads to the user because “fat” is seen as a call for help, or a negative thing to be. The reality is that it is a neutral, descriptive word and many people are taking it back as a means to describe themselves.

“It has been the goal of fat activists and fat liberationists — who have long reclaimed the term “fat” as a neutral physical descriptor rather than a moral one — to communicate these truths to a broader audience for decades. Ironically, nothing has helped the spread of these messages more than social media, a place where fat people are often unwelcome.” (Rebecca Jennings for Vox)

That reclamation is liberating for many fat activists and the use of social media has built a growing movement. Posts wondering “who is profiting from me hating my body” and other thought-provoking questions are driving a deeper conversation with women everywhere.

During the pandemic many fat activists increased their followers. Perhaps the pandemic changed how people view their own bodies, or perhaps the pandemic, civil unrest tied to racial bias, and the way they uniquely highlighted inequities helped people realize their own limited and filtered views of the world around them, including beauty standards and who they engage with on social media.

MENTAL HEALTH

Fat phobia and anti-fat stigma around weight contribute immensely to mental health and wellbeing. Many health conditions attributed to weight, like depression, could be attributed to the societal impact anti-fat stigma vs the actual weight itself.

Ashely Seruya, from the Center for Discovery, wrote,“the constant and socially-accepted microaggressions that fat people experience don’t just result in emotional upset. Consistently experiencing discrimination makes our stress levels rise, activating our fight or flight response, altering the body to push out a hormone called cortisol. This state of chronic stress results in numerous physical health consequences, including elevated blood pressure. Stigma has a marked impact on our physical health.”

Health at Every Size® or (HAES) is a methodology of healthcare, grounded in social justice, that focuses on cultivating a compassionate response to those who have experienced weight stigma. “It has its roots in the fat, queer, feminist rebellion of groups like the Fat Underground” (Center for Discovery). HAES uses pillars like weight inclusivity and respectful care, and takes a wholistic approach to every person, including addressing social, spiritual, economic, and emotion needs. There are resources for finding providers, therapists and support groups who practice a HAES approach in their work.

MOVING FORWARD

What we’ve lived and understood for generations of diet culture never served to be good or healthy for ourselves or society, but through the realization of its problematic history and continued fat phobia, we can change our understanding, and encourage the voices that are simultaneously dismantling these beliefs and investigating systems of oppression. We can do our best to affirm, welcome, and represent all bodies, and strive  to accept, love, and value ourselves and others just as they are.

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Special thanks to Nina Miller for her conversations and resources in the drafting of this piece.