Nicky Reardon
Appearances
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Is it just me or are body standards regressing? What was once this get slim fast supplements of the 90s has now become this rampant abuse of Ozempic. The jazzercise girl has become the pink pilates girl or this rampant return of trend dieting. Skinny Talk, 75 Hard, Winter Arc, Summer Glow Up Challenge, Beach Body Fat Burn.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Or, you know, I remember when everybody in like 2016 YouTuber era, when they were all moving to LA, it was like all doing SoulCycle. You know what I mean? Like there's always like a new thing that they do to convince you that, you know, this is some new thing you need to buy into to fix this problem that we have convinced you you have when you're just a normal girl.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
So why did these toxic body standards come back? What holds this cult of glow-up culture together in mainstream media? Well, that is exactly the question we set out to solve here today. Welcome back to Nicky and I. I'm your host, Nicky Reardon.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Also, I think it's very important to acknowledge, like, when you think about a lot of these creators, even when I just, like, went on, like, hashtag skinny talk, hashtag pink Pilates girl and researching for this video, why is that girl always skinny and white? You know what I mean? Like, it is pretty much all of the time.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And it's interesting that, like, it's not this, like, direct line of whiteness, but almost, like, selling you on this idea of, like, the idea of beauty is being as close to this
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
specific thin white girl as possible um or that this idea of like the way you should look is this person and oh my god they'll have to be all happen to be these skinny white girls like i don't know what it is exactly feel free to leave comments about like your theories about exactly as to why this is and why it has been marketed this way all the time both in terms of people participating in it but also the brands who like do this is so fascinating to me
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Because there is for sure some element of racial identity baked into this in some way. Or also I think maybe it's, this is just me spinning theories. Again, this is an opinion episode. Pretty much being white is like the only ethnicity where you don't have a culture at all.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
So like a lot of times like they kind of manufacture these ritualistic experiences or, you know, eating a certain way or doing a certain challenge or like doing a certain thing because they don't have any sort of like
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
cultural foundation that just is doing that for them already anyways do you know i'm saying like and again i don't really know i could be wrong these are just my theories another thing that i have really found fascinating when thinking about this is like why is gen z so motivated by hotness and why do we need a stupid fucking saying or slogan to convince us to do something that is good for us it's winter arc and summer glow up challenge and beach body burn then 75 hard like
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
What the fuck are you saying? What are you saying? You're just coming in with a new name for working out? Duh, duh. And wow, working out and eating right is good for you? This is not groundbreaking science, right? But being hot and selling this idea of new hotness is so monetizable. And it's fascinating.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And this week, we're really talking about this idea of glow-up culture, wellness, grind set, all of these things that I think are really essentially built off of the idea of trying to play into your own insecurities to... convince you that you have a problem and then sell you a solution to that problem.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
We live in a world where it is arguably more monetizable to be hot than it is to be talented or smart, right? Like at the very least, you could make the argument that like you have to be both in some way. But there are so many people who have built these massive careers. I think of really just like I look this way and you want to be like me. So do this thing that I'm doing.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And that's why this podcast does so well. I'm just kidding. It's because I'm talented, hot and smart. You know what I mean? Like it's just when you're the whole package, like things come easily to you. But on a serious note, like it is just so fascinating to me. And I think again, like a very fascinating thing that we're going to, and I want to make a video about this.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
I just haven't figured out how to do it yet. It's like this world that we live in is so based off of, quantity of attention over expertise. You know what I mean?
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like more people listen to some random hot girl that's like posting her gym routine that you follow and happen to like the content of, then people are listening to like an actual personal trainer or like an actual health professional or an actual thing. Like we kind of like don't care about credibility as a society anymore. We care about scale. We care about number of people paying attention. We
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Or maybe at the very least, like when there is a lot of people paying attention, we just have this subconscious tendency to assume that that makes it credible, which is not true. And again, not to say that every person who makes fitness content is not educated and smart about what they do. There are many incredible people out, incredible creators out there.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
But the fact that it's, like, not even really, I think, a thing discussed or, like, factored considered is so fascinating to me. And I think we've really seen this pendulum switch back and forth, again, this marketing of hotness with, like, corporations.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And the interesting thing also about corporations is, like, they only ever engage in some sort of social movement if it is to tokenize them for profit, right? Like we saw the great example of this was like all like the target pride stuff and how that used to be such a big thing for them.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And then Trump administration comes in and suddenly they're like toning down and I'm not going to do as much pride, blah, blah, blah, right? Like they don't actually take a stance. Their loyalty is to profit. And there are moments in culture where it's more profitable to be very accepting. And there's moments in culture where it's more profitable to be exclusionary.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And it's sad that we are in a moment right now where the very exclusionary, the very authoritarian, like the sort of like supremacist ideology is what is winning. And it's very sad. And something I just want to bring up and encourage to remember five years from now, the pendulum fucking swings back. Remember what they did this time and they will do it to you again.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like there is no loyalty in this. Again, we're seeing a DI initiative. It's another great example. You know what I mean? How it was so amazing. And you know, the 2010s and talking about how there was so much emphasis on diversifying the company, bringing in new perspectives, helping people of marginalized groups, helping handicapped people, helping veterans.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And how this is something that has plagued our society for a very long time, as I'll talk about the history of, but also like is really, really coming back in major ways. And really what's fascinating, I think, is that we're seeing this like repackaging of things that have already existed in the past. Right.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And then, you know, boom, oh no, now that's an issue. Now we're not going to do it anymore. Right. It's all about profit. and also just this idea of like selling hotness. What's fascinating to me about brands like Air One is they don't sell $30 smoothies. They sell status.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like you are getting a $30 smoothie and you feel good about yourself because you somehow know that like I bought a thing that other people cannot buy. This is exactly the same way that like, luxury bags have value, right? Like a Prada bag is not actually $2,000 worth of leather and raw materials. But by having the $2,000 bag, it means that there are less other people out there who have that thing.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Therefore, it feels more desirable, feels more exclusive to be doing that thing. And that's what's so fascinating to me about a Air One. It's like, they're the first brand to do this in food. It's not just a luxury item. They are selling you the idea of luxury with your basic needs, with your groceries, with your lunch, with your smoothie.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like that, it's such a fascinating thing, how they have like cultivated that. When again, like what you're buying is really, you're buying a water bottle, girl. Like you could pay $2 for it or $6 for it. Like that's up to you. It doesn't make you a better or worse person, but that has really worked on people. That it is a very big business and a growing business.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And also, again, talking about this idea of like exclusionary tactics. It's a sad like element of the human condition that when you tell other people that they, hey, like everyone else can't have this thing, but you can have it. That somebody else out there is like, wow, that makes me love it more.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
When it's actually just the same thing, whether they're 100 people could have it or 10 people could have it. Yeah. And that is really, really sad to me. I have this theory that the Pilates body became a status symbol because it is something that cannot be obtained through Ozempic.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And when you think about these people like Bella Hadid and the Kardashians, Hailey Bieber, they really monetized this idea of aspiration and selling you on the idea of being skinny and looking like them, dressing like them, having makeup like them. But once the idea of skinniness became commercialized, like you can literally...
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
pay $1,500 a month for an Ozempic thing, then they had to find a new way to exclude you. So the way they did that is now the Pilates girl, the clean girl, where it's about this new look. Again, the goalpost always moves.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
They have to convince you that something about you is inadequate so that you look to them for inspiration so then they can sell you a thing to be like, hey, you can be closer to me, more like me if you have this, if you buy this, if you do this. And that is the underlying theme of it all. It's so, so terrifying. And with this rampant rise of Ozempic, we really have no idea
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
body positive role models in a way that's scary and I don't say this to like try and comment on these people's bodies but I think it's interesting to think about right like I'm gonna look at somebody like Oprah for an example when she was like really coming up and was getting big and all this like I feel like one of the cornerstones of her brand was that she was not like this hyper thin girl.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
She had a very, like, she's a little curvy. She had a very normal body. Like it wasn't super thin. It wasn't super big. It was just like, like, I really think she was just like, looked like the way most of her audience looked. And that felt so exciting, especially in that time, like cable television.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like I think one of the best examples in current culture is like the Ozempic craze and this sort of like heroin chic look and hyper thin, like it feels so reminiscent of the nineties and two thousands. And like, How also I think like TikTok has perpetuated this and selling you products and this lifestyle idea, blah, blah, blah.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Um, so much so that she literally at one point was like on the board of directors for Weight Watchers. She was like, like a very, very big thing. And she pushed it all the time and talked about this importance of building a healthy lifestyle, blah, blah, blah. And then she took Ozempic, lost all the weight, and now is not on the board.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
She got fired from the board of Weight Watchers for it, I believe. And then is now like endorsing Ozempic left and right, which again is a very like class thing. Like not $1,500 a month for Ozempic is insane. That's a lot of money. Also, I think we've seen this even, too, with, like, music artists.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
I think two big examples are Meghan Trainor and Lizzo, which were two people who really blew up and, like, I think the ethos and story of their music and community was, like, being a plus size woman and being so proud of it and feeling hot and creating music that other girls who look that way heard and also felt hot.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Um, and then they both lost a ton of weight and they don't look like that anymore. Again, like I'm not trying to be mean. I'm what I'm saying is I think young people have lost their representation. There is no more body positive representation in the culture, barely at all. Um,
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And if you are somebody who really felt all this confidence and seen for the first time by listening to that music by watching somebody like Oprah, and then all these people don't look like that anymore. Like and you're a 15 year old girl, like I feel like that has to be so isolating in a world where you are already so isolated.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And again, like I'm not trying to be mean, I'm happy that they're doing what makes them happy. It is their body, it is their choice. Like they are allowed to do that. And it's also a very sick and twisted thing about women in media is like, you know, people are going to hate them when they're fat and then they get skinny and people hate them for being skinny.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And it's like, okay, well, you know, what am I, what do I do? You know, like I, I very much sympathize with that problem. Um, and again, that's why I'm not trying to comment on their bodies. I'm trying to like talk about this idea of representation. Like A young girl, young person has none of that anymore, it really feels like.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And a great example of this we're starting to see is with surgeries, not even just this idea of things like Ozempic. There was a big drama with Remy Bader, who is known, huge creator, for making plus-size fashion content and doing very honest reviews of it, of the brand's, of the clothing, being super realistic about it.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And then she lost roughly 130 pounds in a year through this bariatric procedure known as SADIS, which is a surgery that removes about 80% of the stomach and reroutes part of the small intestine to promote weight loss.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Then apparently she didn't, I guess, didn't talk about it at all in her content and reportedly was even deleting things and comments or blocked users that were asking about it until recently she went on a podcast with Kourtney Kardashian. or Khloe, Khloe Kardashian, and then talked about how she had had this surgery.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Again, like, I don't, I am happy that she did what was, what she felt was best for her. It is her body. It is her choice. It's literally not my body. Like, it doesn't matter. What I'm trying to talk about is like, I imagine that you are just a, you know, a young girl or a young person out there who,
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
I compiled a lot of research and things that I think I want to talk about and will be very, very interesting. So with that, don't forget to subscribe to the channel. 94% of the people who have watched any of these videos did not hit the subscribe button. So, hey, check. You probably forgot or these are getting hit in your recommended feed. So please, please help me out. Support me.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
is not only hitting puberty and anxious and hormonal and having experiences with boys for the first time and figuring out what you look like and all these things, but now it's like, oh, even this one person who I used to watch the content of because they were so able to speak to the experiences I have, I just... It's just they're just not like that anymore.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like, I think that that feels so isolating to these people. I think that's really what I'm trying to say is, like, I fear for the youth who isn't having a person to, like, look up to and a person to tell them it's okay and figure out their own journey and navigation through that.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And, again, like, to talk about myself for an example, like, when I was in high school, I used to be, like, over 250 pounds. Let me put a picture up here. Like, I was very – I was, I was big and I had a lot of struggles with late. I've a lot of, had a lot of struggles with eating disorders. This is a different video for a different time, but it took me years to lose that years.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
I'm talking about, I think like, I don't think I really got like skinny skinny until like college, I guess. Um, And then my rate fluctuated up and down a lot. And then the pandemic came around and I gained like 50 pounds. Like, you know what I mean? But I felt lucky to have doing that in that time because there was elements of culture.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
There was movies and actors and musicians and things that like, made me not feel isolated for being that way. It felt like I had this healthy idea of who I was. I knew that I wanted to lose weight and I found a consistent way to do that where I was going to the gym four times a week and I wasn't killing myself. I wasn't starving myself. It was healthy. It was healthy.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And I fear that like, if I, you know, were exactly that way now and exactly the culture we live in now with this ozempic craze, with this pink bloody stuff, you know what I mean?
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like, would I still have been able to have that experience or would it have been so overwhelming and so exclusionary to me that it would have made me even more anxious and even more afraid of these things like the gym, which already give me so much fucking social anxiety. I hate the gym. I hate it. I hate it. I've hated it always. I hate it now. And I'll hate it until the end of fucking time.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
I would, I don't know if I'd have been able to do with that at 16 years old. I really don't. And also other weird things. I think we're starting to see this thing as like things like veneers. You know what I mean? Like it was so fascinating to me, like Amy Lou Wood from the white Lotus. Like everybody was talking about her teeth so much.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And like when she was like a cast and all this, and I'm like, I think that the reason this is even a topic of conversation for you people is it's actually been such a long time since you've seen an actor without veneers. You forgot that not everybody has perfectly straight teeth.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And these sorts of things I see appearing more and more and more and more often, which makes it so the bodies that we are all born into versus the bodies that we see on billboards and TV screens and phone screens are getting further and further apart.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Um, and then we, I think we're 400 followers away, 64 followers away on Spotify from hitting 10 K. So please, please, please be a homie. You can listen to this on your car, right to work. We can listen to the pod at the gym. Everything is posted here is posted there. Um, and it would really, really help me out.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And that is a really terrifying thing for young people, for young boys and girls who like are again already hate their body, already anxious, all these things. Like I fear for them, which kind of brings me to my overarching problem with wellness and glow up culture is that wellness is focused on telling you what to think, not how to think.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
You see this all the time with like billion dollar morning routine and then 75 hard and that random Saratoga water guy. Like they are telling you, you have to wake up at 4 a.m. Then you have to go to the gym at this time. Then you have to read this amount of pages of the book. But like the real value of these things is just discipline and consistency, right?
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
It does not matter if you go to the gym at 4 a.m. or 9 p.m. as long as you finish the workout. It does not matter what you eat as long as you are having a calorie deficit and getting some good nutrients, right? Like you can have a salad. You can have chicken. You can have this thing. You can have that thing. You can have an acai bowl. You can have a smoothie. It does not matter. It does not.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
You do not. It's not. You can have this cleanse to lose eight pounds in two weeks. You can do it in a thousand different ways. Do you have discipline? Do you have consistency? Are you creating a lifestyle that supports this result, right? But it is not monetizable to say that. It is monetizable to tell you about how,
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
you got to have this one specific smoothie and then they partner with a protein product brand or you got to have this one specific workout class or a workout routine and they're selling you the routine or there's, you know, it's an overarching again, let's subculture and lifestyle where they're working out at the aloe gym and then wearing that two piece set that happens to be $150 like it's,
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
is not monetizable to give you the truth. It is monetizable to sell you this elevated fiction. And that's terrifying. It's terrifying. And honestly, I feel this way very often about like spirituality sometimes. Like you cannot manifest your way out of a lack of discipline. You can make the vision board. You can say the affirmations.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
But none of that is going to replace you actually having to do the fucking work. Like write that first paragraph. Go to the gym. Post the video. Whatever it is, everything you want in life is a result of discipline and consistency. You need the discipline to start and the consistency to finish. And if you get 1% better every day, in 100 days, you will have what you want.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And that is not because of some fucking vision board or some affirmation you said in the mirror, but because you worked for it. As you should. And be proud of yourself. Like, this is why people talk about imposter syndrome all the time. It's because you're going and talking about how it was from your vision for work. Like, no, you went to the gym fucking 25 times this month. That's incredible.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And then, oh, they're coincidentally selling you a course on how to do that. They have a partnership with some fitness brand. And of course, you just have to get that matching workout set, the yoga mat, the standing club, and of course, the $300 a month gym membership. your body has become a product. They have to convince you to hate something about yourself so that you see it as a problem.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
So with that, let's dive in to the cult of wellness and also just this toxic body standards making a comeback. Big disclaimer I want to talk about with this video is that my goal of this is not to be commenting on people's bodies or telling anybody how they should look or shouldn't look or what they should do or shouldn't do. But in order to accurately talk about this topic and the way it has
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Be proud of that. Own that. It is not a fucking manifestation. You know what I mean? Like, this is my issue with this whole thing of spirituality. And I don't think it's a coincidence that at the same time there is this increased discussion of things like manifestation and spirituality. there's also this increased discussion of imposter syndrome. Like I think that these things are linked.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
I think that people are constantly looking at things outside of ourselves to validate some sort of feeling, whether that's accomplishment, whether that's a lack of accomplishment, whether that's self-esteem, whatever. Yeah, you might've wrote it down on a vision board, but at the end of the day, like you fucking worked hard for it and be proud of that. Be proud of that.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
You don't need to like talk about the affirmation or whatever, which brings me to like my closing arguments for this. And I would like to make it very clear. Fitness is a good thing. It is a great thing. It is important for your physical health. It is important for your mental health. And even just having things in your life that build routine is so important. However, the...
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
problem with it, my problem with it, and I hope the takeaway from this video, is that we keep pushing these one-size-fits-all ideas. Whether that be the in-body type or manufacturing this subculture to feel like you need to be XYZ or to be that girl.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
It is doing these things in the wrong way or at the very least taking 1% of the equation and telling you that's why the problem was solved when it was one of many, many factors. Many, many, many, many factors. Especially when it's things, I mean, I even talk about things like this in like skincare. You see this all the time too when it's like, that is so genetics-based. It is just genetics-based.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like someone might look at me and be like, oh my God, Nick, you have great skin. I had to go on three full rounds of Accutane for three years, right? It was miserable. I was peeling my skin off like a lizard, right? You might think I look great and I could tell you my skincare routine, but most of that is because I did fucking Accutane. It was a hormonal imbalance that like needed to be corrected.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And I had to go through three full treatments of it, three nine month cycles of it, and that fixed it. But on the surface, you might be like, oh my God, wow, I need a skincare routine, right? That is not correct. And it would be very monetizable for me to tell you my skincare, right? Like I can make a video like that. You know, I can talk about this product and that product and blah, blah, blah.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
But like that is not real. That's not the truth. It's just what makes money. And I do like in concessions I would like to make to this idea of like fitness culture and wellness and culture. I do really understand the idea of trying to make it a collective experience to make it feel more tangible and relatable. And I do think that works for a lot of people.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
I mean, even just friends I have, I know who are like really struggling to working out and they got into some sort of group fitness class and that really motivated them to go. And they love the idea of like going with a friend and now it's this, you know, creating this idea of a third space, which is a very rare thing in our culture right now and blah, blah, blah.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
But that also creates exclusion, right? Like, and if you are... If you are creating one group, it means that there's somebody outside of that group. And that is this, I think, thing we need to balance and talk about and be cognizant of. Another pro, I think, is in these sorts of things like a 75 hard, where it really tells you what to think, not how to think.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
I think the vision of those types of things is they're like, yeah, this is a ridiculous challenge, but my goal is that you do it for 75 days and like maybe you discover three things that you actually really enjoyed. Maybe you really actually got into a habit of reading 10 pages a day and that was awesome. Or you really got into a habit of waking up at 7 a.m. and you love that.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And that at the end of it, it's okay if you don't do the other things because you found these two things that really, you know, improved your life in a positive way. I get that. I think the fear of it is, again, with trying to make this idea of like altering your body a viral challenge,
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
is that when you create this like all-encompassing package, people become so overwhelmed by the idea of it that they just shut down altogether, right? If they're like, oh, like I did one gym routine, but like I'm not going to have time to make it to the second gym appointment of my 75 hard challenge.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
infiltrated the media we consume and the content we consume and all these things, I'm going to reference some people as examples. My intention with this is not to belittle them or make commentary about their bodies or what their weight loss journey or fitness journey is, but it is to kind of show why I think this has become a mainstream thing.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
So like I also don't need to read the 10 pages or I only drank half a liter when I was supposed to drink a full liter of water. So blah, blah, blah. Do you know what I'm saying? Like humans are momentum-based creatures, right? And the way we get into things is build a ramp. It is very easy, right?
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like you could have not working out in two years and you could give, you could do five pushups right now. And then tomorrow you could do seven, six pushups. And the next day you could do seven pushups. And the right, like, And you build the ramp until it's... Doing 100 push-ups is easy, and then maybe it's not... It doesn't feel like an issue to, like, pick up a dumbbell or whatever, right?
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like, people... We cannot go zero to 100. And so much of these challenges and these ideas are based off of that. This idea of, like, you haven't worked out in so long, so now try 75 hard. We're going to throw you into the most insane deep end of it. Like, working out twice a day, drinking all this water, not eating this and that, not drinking at all, reading all the time, blah, blah, blah.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
All these things that, like, are the challenge. And that has... turn people away from just creating a consistent lifestyle that works for them. And that leads me to my final point. It's like, you need to find something that works for you.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
That can be a class, that can be swimming, that can be hiking, that can be joining a run club, that can be playing basketball with your friends, that can be having a friend over where your meal prep together every Sunday, whatever it is, like It needs to be for you. It needs to be doable for you. And it needs to be consistent for you.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
You know, if that means that you haven't been in the gym in a long time and you're like, I have so much anxiety about getting back in the gym. I hate my body right now. Like, okay, great. Your goal for this week is I want you to go to the gym three times. You're going to get on the treadmill for just 15 minutes and then leave. That's it.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And then after you do that for a week or two weeks, you're going to realize, okay, just the idea of like going to the gym is not as scary anymore. Like I've gotten over that anxiety. Now let me like do 15 minutes on the treadmill and then 50 minutes of like, you know, some equipment of something. And then, okay, and then just being in that sort of equipment zone is less scary to you.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And then you blah, blah, blah, right? That is literally what like exposure therapy is. It is psychologically proven that you can get over fears and anxieties and mental blocks by... taking them into these tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny increments, and then just increasing all the time over time. It's also like how you build muscle, even biologically, right?
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
You lift 20 pounds, and then you lift 25 pounds, and you lift 30 pounds, blah, blah, blah, right? And these challenges, this wellness, this glow-up culture is not geared towards that. It's all like, this is how you're going to lose eight pounds in two weeks. And like, that's terrifying. It's also kind of unhealthy. So with that, this was the cult of wellness, the cult of glow-up culture.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
I hope that my point of like not trying to be belittling to anybody or anybody who enjoys these things. Again, this you do you, girl. You do you. I'm just saying like these overarching problems that I see as a culture and this regression of body standards, I think we're really moving towards. So please don't forget to subscribe. Follow me on Spotify. Please, please, please.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And I will see you all next week. Bye.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
This regression of body standards has become popular because there are popular people doing or exemplifying these things in this way. And this is also very much, like, I think an opinion episode. Like, I'm going to rant. I'm going to talk my shit a little. But, like, it's really me. It is Nikki's opinion. It is what I see, how these things make me feel.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And other people might not feel that way, and that is totally okay. Again, my goal is not to, like, tear anybody down, but hopefully to, like, challenge the way you think about this weird, again, like, cult of wellness and cult of glow-up culture. So I think in order to do this first is we really need to talk about this problem of the idea of like skinny and healthy being synonymous.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
It's a very interesting thing that has happened when health really has nothing to do with thinness. So what does it actually mean to be healthy? The World Health Organization defines health as, quote, health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely an absence of disease or infirmity. Two interesting things about this.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
One, I think it's very fascinating that in this whole, you know, discussion about wellness and hot girl blank, whatever, like, it is so much only about the physical, right?
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
It is about the way you look and being hot and feeling hot and making other people think you're hot so they want you and they desire you and health and really if we want to think what wellness is as a concept is so much more than that. You can be skinny and depressed. You can be...
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
curvy and happy like there's like there's no a it's not a or b and that is i think a really really scary slippery slope that we have fallen into with this also with this is also like something i'm like talk about this discussion of like bmi and how we like measure this concept of health as a thing. So BMI body mass index is literally a formula.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
It's just like weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared. I think that's it. Like that is literally what the formula is. Um, and then you get a number and they've said like, this is what healthy is and this is what obese is, blah, blah, blah. And what's fascinating is skinny does not mean healthy. You can be extremely skinny and extremely unhealthy.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like, yes, you could eat nothing but lettuce for seven days and your BMI would go down. However, you would be extremely malnourished. You would have no energy. You would be grouchy. Your pieces of your body would start to shut down. right? Like you would not be healthy while you would be skinny or these measures of what health is would look like you are being more healthy than you were a week ago.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
So then, oh, they just happen to sell a solution. It has trapped you in this never ending cycle. And this is the cult of glow up culture. It's veganism one month, then carnivore diet the next month. Soul cycle, then Pilates, then, oh my God, I want a dancer body like Tate McRae, but then, oh my God, I want to be skinny like Bella Hadid.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
You would not actually be healthy. Like in this conversation of skinniness versus health, there is no discussion of like nutrients and macros and like, are you getting a protein? Like, are you having a well-balanced diet, right? Like that is what health is. Health is a requirement for that. Like you need protein and
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
potassium and vitamin c and all of the salt like your body needs salt and like sodium like these are these are important things um and the way that people are really trying to sell this idea of health is this idea of skinniness and that is not true i mean again like it's nice if you want like if you want to look that way if that makes you feel satisfied and happy and confident go for it but also this idea of somebody being like well you are not super skinny therefore you are not healthy i
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Or the idea of somebody skinny is healthy. Great example of this, I have a friend. I won't say her name because I didn't ask her if I could tell this story. But she was born with a heart disease. Like she has had to get open heart surgery at least once in her life. I think multiple times and also had said by doctors like at some point later in years.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like she will have to get open heart surgery again. And she has an incredible body. Incredible. Literally, I've been with her. We're at the pool literally this past weekend. And I think three separate people came up to her and like compliment how good she looks.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
But it is because she has a lot of like metabolism issues and these issues with her heart and her issue with blood pressure and blood sugar and all of these things. So her body actually like cannot maintain mass.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And it's actually a very deep health problem that she has to be like very extremely conscious of and eat things and have a lot of protein and like eat certain snacks and eat certain amounts of sugar, blah, blah, blah, blah. And to 99% of the world, if you look at this girl and showed like a picture of her in a bikini, people would be like, this is healthy. She's she looks amazing.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
She's so healthy. And she's by definition, not healthy. Like she has a heart condition. She has a disability sticker on her car because like if she goes walking too long, like it's it is bad for her heart, right? So like, this is like this big misconception and like a scary thing of this idea of like,
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Thinness equals hotness and hotness equals health when these three are three completely separate things, which is terrifying to me. And another really fascinating thing about this is the ideal body type, in quotes, is always changing. And I'll give you multiple examples of this. From the 15th century to the 17th century during the Renaissance period, the ideal body was to be plus size.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
They called it plump a lot of the time because it showed that you were of higher social status than the peasants. You had more money to have excess food. You didn't have to work some job in the field or in the sun or labor anymore. that would cause you to lose weight.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
There was also these interesting like health things that like doctors at the time used to think about that like pregnant women should be as plump as possible because they have to give as many nutrients to the baby. So if somebody is trying to have a child or expecting child, they would eat all the time and blah, blah, blah. And like that was considered hot. That was the ideal body.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
This cycle never ends because solving the problem is not monetizable. Instead, they have to convince you it's sea moss, then bone broth, and it's this cleanse or that cleanse. They are trying to sell you on the idea of one thing being a solution to a lifestyle problem. when really all you need is a little bit of consistency and discipline.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
That is why in Renaissance paintings, you can look at these kings and queens and they are like very, they're plump. And that would not be the hot body standard of today, right? You swing to the 18th century or 19th century. This is when the corset era really, really brings in, right? It is so hourglass. It's not even just about like having a tiny waist. They would have these
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
massive train skirts like like six foot train dresses behind them and it was like to have this one specific shape it wasn't even necessarily about like thinness or thickness it was like you had to be both in this perfectly specific way and like we're gonna create these fabrics and literally like break your own ribs and do damage your organs to fit that and then think of the 20th century right in the 1920s we have the flapper that is like short hair it's very a lot more tomboyish but kind of still like pixie girl
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
completely different from any of the things we just talked about. Then in the 40s and 60s, we have this post-World War I, World War II era, where the ideal body type became this domestic woman. Think very Marilyn Monroe. Like, she's skinny, but she's voluptuous. She has a cinch waist, but is wearing padded bras and big dresses and an apron. And then you can go to the 70s and 80s.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
It's now the jazzercise era, right? It was like this lean and muscle-toned bodies were the ideal body. Then... 90s and 2000s, it's heroin chic, those low rise jeans, low, low, low rise jeans. And then 2010s, it's curvy, but fit, you know, the BBLs, but you have a flat stomach and the huge lips like think Kylie Jenner lip challenge.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Think Kim Kardashian with that paper magazine shoe where she's like popping champagne on her butt. And I also think of an interesting side note discussion is like, we really need to have conversations about the way we label some of these body types.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like the idea that people like labeled Kim Kardashian as like a curvy woman when she was just like a woman with a butt, but then perfectly thin and like every other way. It's like insane to me. And now in the 2020s, we are swinging back to this hyper thinness. Like the BBLs are quite literally getting removed. Yeah. Like, there are celebrities you have who are having their BBLs removed.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And you can even think this is, like, women. Like, the way straight girls love twinks now. Timothee Chalamet, Tom Holland, the boys from Challengers. Like, they love this, like, skinny rat boy. We are going back to heroin chic in this body center in a scary way. Like, there is somebody in your friend group who would scissor role model. Yeah. a woman that would do that with that man.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like, you know what I mean? Like they let the skinny tattooed boy is like the hot boy now. And you think in 2010s, like that was not what it was. You think in like the eighties and nineties or what the Beatles looked like versus what Michael Jackson looked like versus what like David Bowie looked like. Like these things are not,
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
unanimous they are not uniform they are ever changing um so because of that again you are chasing a standard that does not exist you are changing a goal post that is perpetually moving which begs the question truly like why do body standards change well when beauty standards masquerade themselves as health standards
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
They have to convince you to hate something about yourself in order to sell you the solution. You can be skinny, but you don't have a Pilates body. You can have a Pilates body, but your butt is flat. You can be curvy and thick, but then your waist isn't small. So what do they do? They find a way to monetize your agony with a new trend.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Get 1% better every day, and in 100 days, you will be where you want to be. But they don't do that, because there is a lot more money in making you chase this idea of a fictional body type, this subjective idea of perfection. And it's so sad to me to see these body standards regressing in our culture after we just had some years of really positive improvements.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
First it's Pilates, then SoulCycle, then Barry's Bootcamp, then you have to drink bone broth, or okay, great, you're skinny, but now you need to gua sha, or get your lymphatic whatever the fuck drained. Like, eat! is insane. And there's a reason all of these things cost money. They have to move the goalposts, so you have to keep buying in pursuit of this thing.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like, this cult of wellness is a marketing scam. It is a marketing scam. It is convincing you that you have something wrong with you, so they sell you a solution. That is what the entire thesis of it is. And it's so terrifying and very weird late-stage capitalism shit that, like, we're just cool with that.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
and love it and i've also convinced ourselves into being like this is not only normal but like optimal like that is optimal living you should have to spend hundreds of dollars a month on facials on a nice gym on a workout class on getting your things drained on getting like that's not normal that is not normal it's never been normal in history like we need to take a step back and reevaluate that and that is why glow up culture has become sort of repackaged body dysmorphia
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
They have to manufacture a new subculture, the pink Pilates girl or the hot girl, this or that, because by then defining that group, they can then isolate people from that group where they have to pay money to be accepted into that scubs culture, right? An average Pilates class costs $30 or $40 a session. $300 a month for a membership. An alley yoga mat costs $150.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Luxury gyms like Equinox cost $300 a month. And they are doing that to create this subculture of what you wear, right? It's not just the memberships and the classes. Then it's the Stanley Cup. Then it's the Lululemon leggings. Then it's the matching set from Aritzia. And it's fascinating is like this sort of idea of athleticism to create a class divide is not new, right?
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
One of the best examples of this is golf and tennis, fun fact, is that like during these times when we were desegregating and whatnot, there were these things where they tried to create like predominantly white spaces on purpose.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
One of the great examples of this, again, golf and tennis, where like they intentionally made it so in order to participate in something like golf, for example, you have to have a specific drafts code in this thing. You had to be a membership at this specific country club, blah, blah, blah.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
So the only people who could do that were like the people who already had amassed this wealth in some way, which didn't happen to be these people who were like recently desegregated, couldn't have access to a better education system, blah, blah, blah, right? Same thing with tenants.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like these, they have found ways to like bake in these norms of adding an aestheticism to a physical activity because then not only can they exclude people from it based on that, they get to monetize it more. They get to monetize it more. You got to buy the golf shirt. You got to buy the golf pants. And you have to buy shoes for this sport or different shoes for that sport.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like, this is a naughty new thing. I think what's fascinating is we have seen it recently make its way into one very women-dominated spaces. Like, this internet, this, like, wellness section of the internet is so, I think, very female-dominated. You know, when you think of, like, again, like these pink Pilates girls and the clean girl and all that type of thing.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And they found a way to do that not through sports but through these, like, group-based fitness activities I think is really what has boomed in the past like five years. And again, then it always has to change so that they can make you buy it all over again, right? Like the Pink Pilates girl will not be a thing in three years and it'll be something else.