DESIGNER

Brady Daniel

PROFILE/DESCRIPTION

‘When Beauty Standards and Body Positivity Collide’ 

Article text courtesy of nytimes.com

Recently Instagram led me to the account of a very thin social media influencer. I would not usually begin an article with a description of the subject’s body, but in this case it’s also her personal brand. She often appears in luxury apartments or hotels, modeling club wear while filming skits about how heterosexual men and women ought to relate to one another — pretty standard fare for an Instagram model in 2025.

The twist? She identifies as disadvantaged, a survivor of adolescent bullying over her slender frame who has become a champion of “body positivity” for the ultrathin. In one video, she lists her height and weight in the corner of the image as she films herself stretching in athleisure; in another, she works to “boost the confidence of girls with a slim body type” by celebrating her own “small waist,” sharp jaw and prominent collarbone.

As I scrolled, mesmerized, through her account, I watched her knit together two seemingly irreconcilable cultural forces. She performs a narrow beauty ideal for women and cloaks it in the language of inclusivity. Her feed is a clever combination of methods for capturing online attention: look like a model, talk like an activist, behave like a troll. And it represents a new balancing act for women in the public eye, and those who are watching them.