Meghan Trainor’s Weight Loss Is The Final Nail In The Body Positivity Coffin

Fast forward a decade, and Trainor's transformation is striking. She’s slim and sculpted, her once-cheeky face now sharp, and many online have said she’s become exactly what she once mocked in her music: the “stick figure silicone Barbie doll.”

She certainly isn’t the only one to throw body positivity under the bus and never look back, but given her once-booming voice in the movement, she perfectly captures the entire cultural arc that’s been playing out for years. She’s the symbol of a pendulum that’s swung all the way from bass to treble.

The Manufactured Movement

The early 2010s were the golden age of self-acceptance hashtags. Body positivity positioned itself as a rebellion against diet culture and fashion’s obsession with waif-thin models and found its megaphone on social media. At its best, it revealed how much of “perfection” was an illusion, exposing the power of editing and airbrushing. But somewhere between Dove commercials and Target campaigns, the movement took an ugly turn.

“Real bodies” became a very specific and often undesirable aesthetic synonymous with overweight, while “fake bodies” became synonymous with aspirational beauty. Ultimately, it didn’t free women from comparison; it just tried (and failed) to flip conventional standards upside down and insist on those instead.

Real women became code for bigger women, as if thin women somehow ceased to exist. “Relatable” morphed into “overweight.” And if you wanted to look toned or thin, you could be accused of being fake, vain, or anti-feminist. Even when body positivity became nearly impossible to escape, it was also impossible to trust. Its loudest influencers claimed to love their imperfections, but their photos were still edited, their angles still strategic.

Then came the cracks in the facade. Lizzo, the movement’s high priestess, turned her back on being fat. Adele was shamed for slimming down. Megan Trainor is the latest domino. Her transformation isn’t hypocrisy so much as inevitability because deep down, we all knew from the beginning that given the choice between being fat or not, most of us would prefer not.

What ‘Real’ Was Supposed to Mean

The most tragic part of the body-positivity hangover is that we forgot what real actually means.
Real doesn’t mean obese or unkempt, nor does it mean rejecting beauty, health, or aspiration. Real simply means not artificial, not the product of starvation or surgery, not the expression of self-hatred or self-indulgence.

It was a faulty movement from the start because it confused health with validation and taught women to “celebrate” themselves in whatever state they were in, but never how to grow stronger, healthier, or more peaceful inside their own bodies. It was self-esteem outsourcing, packaged as empowerment.

There have always been women who embodied that middle ground. Some of my favorites are Monica Bellucci, Eva Mendes, Penélope Cruz, and Catherine Zeta-Jones, but there are countless others. These bodies are womanly but healthy, sensual but very real. You couldn’t confuse them with silicone clones, despite some similarities. They were distinct, and each represented something we seem to have lost: a form of femininity rooted in health and confidence.

The False Choice

Body positivity told women they had to choose: be “real” or be “fake.” Love your curves or betray your sisters, but that’s a false binary. You can pursue health without hating yourself. The pendulum swing, from glorifying obesity to glorifying Ozempic, reveals the same underlying sickness: a lack of inner peace, which was supposedly the whole point of body positivity in the first place.

We don’t need another trend telling women what kind of body is politically correct. We just need a rational return to the truth: our bodies are most beautiful when they are strong, nourished, and loved. Maybe Megan Trainor’s transformation and the cultural questions around it signal a craving for that honesty.