I’m the first person to admit that my habit of celeb-bashing is becoming a recurrent (and a possibly over-repetitive) topic on this blog, but I just can’t help it when those singer-slash actor- slash- idiot’s really don’t help themselves. So. in true form, this fortnight I decided to side-step the impending doom of mid-term assignments and, as a consequence, entered a far worse circle of hell. Welcome to the not so sneaky world of body-shaming, packaged up by the music industry as a modern-day attempt at empowerment, that some are even labelling as feminism. Give me strength.
What probably doesn’t need introducing, though, is the song in question. Anyone who has turned on a radio, or has entered a high-street retailer over the past few months will be overly-acquainted with 20 year old Massachusetts born, Meghan Trainor’s annoyingly catchy breakthrough single, ‘All About That Bass’. For the few of you who are fortunate enough to be unaware of Trainor’s debut track, it’s the kind of overly-safe, doo-wop sound that your parents wouldn’t mind you listening to when they give you a lift, that wouldn’t sound out of place on a pre-teen compilation album. Critics have lauded the single as a body-positive anthem; a much-needed refreshing antidote to tactics of the advertising moguls and the super-slim ideals of the fashion industry. The kids off the much-loved Finebros YouTube series, ‘Kids React’ seem to think so too, describing the song as having ‘a good beat, good lyrics and a good message’. And with lyrics like ‘I see the magazines working that Photoshop, we know that s*** ain’t real, come on now make it stop’ and ‘cause every inch of you is perfect from the bottom to the top’ you’d be forgiven for thinking that it is worthy of such accolades.
To be honest I find it a tad patronising and simplistic to assume that every member of Trainor’s tweenage target audience wants to, and needs to, be told that they are perfect, (who cares about thinking of themselves, flaws and all, as perfect and what does it even mean?). My main problem with the message behind ‘All About that Bass’ however, is that in celebrating the bodies of one group, Trainor takes two steps back and insults the appearance of another, women who happen to be quite slim. Defining slim women as ‘skinny b******’ seems to be a form of passive aggressive hilarity for omniscient Trainor, who makes anyone on the slimmer side aware that’s she’s on their case, and she knows how they think they are ‘fat’. Only then are they worthy of that well-worn, clichéd praise that they are ‘perfect from the bottom to the top’. And god forbid, if they actually feel confident enough with their own body, then they are not deserving of the very same praise that appeared to be universal in the first verse.
And the so-called celebration of those who are not a ‘stick figure silicone Barbie doll’ in Trainor’s eyes, isn’t that great either. Trainor asserts that she will never enter the Barbie world, as she has the ‘boom-boom that all the boys chase’. Oh, and because her Mamma knows that Ken likes ‘ a little more booty to hold at night’. In effect, Trainor equates the worth of her and women like her not just as ‘curvy girls’, but as a human beings, as solely and directly relational to the desires of the presumed heterosexual man. She categorises women into fat and thin or curvy and skinny (or however you want to label it) and, in a way, pits them against each other to fight for this affection, where the ‘curvier’ girls seem to be the ‘winners’ this time. That doesn’t really profit anyone, aside from patriarchy, of course.
It seems those who applaud Trainor have not taken the time to look beyond the sugary, instagram-esque aesthetics of the video. You don’t even need to go as far as reading between the lines of the lyrics to be left with a far more bitter taste. And yes, it probably won’t make the elderly or nervous need to have a sit down like the lyrics of Minaj’s 2014 smash, ‘Anaconda’ will, (featuring the timeless and pleasant chant of ‘f*** those skinny b****** in the club’), but ‘All About that Bass’ is just a palatable version of that kind of attitude, the kind of mind-set Taylor Swift dished out to pre-teens everywhere in 2009 with ‘she wears short skirts, I wear t-shirts’, girl versus girl spiel. Sorry kids.
Image Sources
Image 1: Screen-shot taken from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuO4ksIPJqY
Image 2: http://imabeautygeek.com/2014/07/08/meghan-trainor-all-about-that-bass-a…
Images 3 and 4: Screen-shot taken from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuNIsY6JdUw