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What is beauty?
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The Beginning
The Beginning
Before we dive into the history and development of the body positivity movement, we shall first understand what it is and what the popular hashtag #BoPo is about.
Body positivity is the promotion of self-love and acceptance of bodies of any shape, size, or appearance; including rolls, dimples, cellulite, acne, hairy bodies, bleeding bodies, fat bodies, thin bodies, and (dis)abled bodies. It can be any message, visual or written, that challenges dominant ways of viewing the physical body in accordance with beauty ideals and encourages the reclaiming of embodiment and control over one’s self-image. It encompasses any individual or movement actions which aim to denounce the societal influences and construction of body norms.
BoPo may be something entirely new to you, but its origin can be traced back to the 1960s feminist fat-acceptance movement in the United States (Cwynar-Horta, 2016). Since 2012, with the proliferation of Instagram comes the heightened presences of the body positive movement on social media. Instagram is used as a platform to post selfies to challenge dominant ideals of feminine beauty by women who occupy non-normative bodies. One prominent example would be the @effyourbeautystandards account created by plus-sized model Tessa Holiday, which is a campaign to retaliate the messages preached by the media that women are no longer beautiful when they are above a size 10. Slowly but surely, the mass media acknowledges the importance of this movement by covering the movement and its influence grows exponentially.
In 2019, the hashtag #bodypositivity on Instagram yielded around 6.1 million posts, and in a staggering pace, the number of posts doubled in less than a year with a yield of about 12.6 million posts in 2020 (Cohen, Fardouly et al., 2019; Stevens & Griffiths, 2020).
Differences between the UK and HK on Body Positivity
Differences between the UK and HK on Body Positivity
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Beauty ideals are being reflected in the advertisements we see daily. In HK, advertisements in a range of popular lifestyle magzines have reflected evidence of gender role stereotypes, in particular advertisements for products targeting females (Chan & Cheng, 2012). It is not surprising to find advertisements being dominated by Caucasian models, while adopting the classic/femine beauty type. A common strategy used by advertisements in the beauty industry is to display the before-and-after pictures of female celebrities. Such choreography of image and text operates as a mental projection that increasingly values the ideal, for instance thinness and ample breasts, and normalises the intervention in physical appearance (Wong, 2019).
On the other hand, a variety of beauty types which embraces diversity is observed among the advertisements in the UK. More big brands like Levis, Nike and TU show their commitment to diversity and inclusion through their impactful advertising campaigns. For example, Sainsbury's clothing range TU launched a "Summer of Love" campaign with its advertisement featuring women with body shapes and sizes, races and ages, without any photoshop or retouch, dancing around in summer dresses and swimming costumes. Proclamation for body positivity and self love is gradually making a revolutionary influence on the media's portrayal of beauty and one's lifestyle in the UK. It seems that Hong Kong's advertiser has much to catch up on!
TV show
TV show
How true is that you are what you watch? Latest findings suggest that watching television programmes shapes our thinking and preference and even affects people's cognitive ability. Celebrity worship often relates to one's attitude about his body. In the process of admiring your favourite celebrities, self objectification occurs as you adore the physical appearance of the celebrity and start evaluating your body based on others' physical characteristics (Aruguete et al., 2014). Sometimes, you will realise the TV actors and actresses are looking strikingly similar accross different channels. Muscularity is undoubtedly one of the criteria for ideal body type for men in HK. Typical male protagonists are represented by strong muscular arms, a large firm chest, a slim waist and board shoulders. Influenced by the Western culture, people believe that women ideal body shape should be slim, with porcelein skin, large, firm and symmetrical breasts and wide hips and firm buttocks (a representation of fertility).
Similary, the UK's ideal body image has thinner legs and arms, as well as a flatter stomach. Women with fuller lips, a slimmer face, larger eyes, and higher cheekbones, blond hair are considered as being more attractive, and men with more rugged and masculine faces are again seen as being much more attractive. However, things have changed in the all-time favourite soaps and actors of various shape, colour and age were casted. "EastEnders" has long featured multiracial actors and actresses. Meanwhile, the Baileys mark the first black family to appear on the national soap "Coronation Street" in the show's 59-year history in June 2019. Recently, some programmes have put much effort in advocating diversity and body positivity, like "10 Years Younger in 10 Days", a reality make-over show which help people of different ages and background to explore beauty and retrieve their confidence using non-invasive cosmetic technique . Whereas in HK, actors not up to the 'beauty standard', like plump people, often play the role of the clown or supporting characters even till today.
Clothing
Clothing
Clothing brands and markets are a direct representation of body positivity trends in society. In Hong Kong, the population of plus-sized people is relatively low. Therefore, sadly, the clothing choices are exclusive to thin people. For example, the most popular clothing styles are Japanese and Korean. They usually sell clothes in free sizes, that is around size S-M. In most stores, they only provide sizes from XS, S, M to L. Therefore, people outside of these sizes find it extremely hard to buy clothes, no matter they are under-sized or plus-sized.
In a magazine article introducing plus-size clothing in Hong Kong, all the brands introduced were foreign brands from the US and Europe. They include H&M, ASOS, River Island and Nordstrom (Sassy, 2017). Among them, many UK companies including River Island, ASOS, Anna Scholtz, M&S, Next and Topshop are on the list. This reflects that UK clothing brands are more inclusive of sizes. They offer a range of sizes from UK size 4 to size 28. Nike in London also displays plus-size mannequins in stores.
The comparison between clothing sizes in Hong Kong and the UK offers us a glimpse into the differences in the perceptions of body image and body positivity. In general, Hong Kong does not cater to the needs of people of all sizes whereas the UK does.
Underlying factors of different perceptions of body positivity
Underlying factors of different perceptions of body positivity
This section employs the Cultural Onion theory to compare and contrast the perceptions of body positivity of the UK and Hong Kong in order to find out the underlying factors that have given rise to the current situations in both places.
The UK Hong Kong
Dove's body positivity campaign
Dove's body positivity campaign
The famous body positivity campaign advertised by Dove in the UK. Models of a diversity of races, sizes and ages were employed. It is the 'true body positivity campaign' welcomed by the public.
Symbol
Symbol
Miss Hong Kong Pageant
Miss Hong Kong Pageant
It is sad that there is a lack of notable body positivity campaigns in Hong Kong. Miss Hong Kong Pageant was popular in the past, where the candidates were aggressively criticised on their outlook by the public. It has slowly transformed to focus more on the internal quality such as talents, personality, intellect demonstrated by the candidates in recent times.
Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge was voted the most influential beauty icon in an online poll in the UK.
Tom Hardy is loved by many in the UK for his masculinity and great body shape.
Heroes
Heroes
(Positive)
Michele Monique Reis is named "The Beauty" in Hong Kong. Her appearance and outlook is approved by the public.
Louis Koo is famous for his masculinity, tanned skin in Hong Kong.
Adele, a singer, used to be commented on her plus-sized body shape and now has reduced a lot of weight.
Tom Cruise, a famous actor, was made fun of his short height in the UK.
Heroes
Heroes
(Negative)
Joyce Cheng, a singer, has been criticised by the public for her plus-sized shape.
Wong Cho Lam, an actor, was made fun of his short height and big nose by the public.
"You look nice today!"
According to our interview with our host family in the UK, British people tend to make positive comments on each other's outlook during greeting in order to give each other's a boost of confidence, especially with their close ones. They avoid making any negative comments on their outlook.
Rituals
Rituals
Greetings
in terms of Body Image
"You look fatter/thinner than before!"
It is not common for Hong Kong people to greet people by making compliments such as "you look great today!" because of our shyness. However, it is quite usual that people notice other's change of body size and comment "you look fatter/thinner than the last time we met!" upon meeting with each other.
The UK government has conducted a survey in 2020 and found out that around 65% of British people have been struggling with a poor body image (Parliament of the UK, 2020).
Diet culture, post-partum pressures, social media, aging, and a lack of visual representation of older women have contributed to the poor body image (Parliament of the UK, 2020). However, as British society has become more open to embracing different races and cultures, so as different body shapes in recent decades. The British government and big companies are noticing the trend of body positivity, thus they have delivered campaigns to advocate this awareness. For example, the government in 2015 has started a Body Confidence Campaign.
To conclude, British society has a higher acceptance to change in general, and most importantly, the government and brands are progressive to lead changes in the society.
Values
Values
Research has shown that despite only less than 5% of respondents were overweight, more than 85% of respondents in Hong Kong wanted to weigh less (Fung & Yuen, 2003). This is reflected by the thin-ideal spread by the Western cultures as Hong Kong is a very Westernised and international city (Rochelle, 2016).
However, instead of targeting the low body image issue, this thin ideal has penetrated and persisted through society for many years. Awareness has not been raised on this issue. Companies have also built on this trend in this very capitalistic society to promote unrealistic slimming business. In addition, more stigmatization on plus-sized body shape, small breasts etc. has bred as social media prevails.
Patriarchy also contributes to the persistence of the thin-ideal in Hong Kong. Hong Kong's largest online forum LIHKG often endorses aggressive criticism of the female body shapes. Older generation often comments on one's body shapes, especially to the younger people in the family, if they do not fit the thin-ideal.
To conclude, British and Hong Kong socierty has faced similar situations. Since the UK is more progressive, it has grown to be more accepting. Yet Hong Kong remains very traditional and reserved in changes due to the Chinese influence.
Why do you have to love your body?
Why do you have to love your body?
Body positivity movements are arising not only in the UK, but in many other countries and on the social media as well. But why do they matter and why should we care?
A study in 2020 (Stevens & Griffiths, 2020) has discovered that when university students are exposed to body positivity movement on social media, they experience higher body satisfaction about their appearance, weight and body shape, and their emotional well-being improves. Generally, they become happier, more confident and more inspired, and less guilty, less anxious and less upset. In fact, simply by listening to BoPo song lyrics and watching BoPo music videos, body satisfaction of women increases (Coyne, 2021).
You may still be pondering about why BoPo should be promoted in the society. What is with being satisfied with your body, you may ask. Body satisfaction and body images are important as they are associated with eating disorders including anorexia and bulimia, and the surging of cosmetics surgery (Hogan & Strasburger, 2008; Kim & Lennon, 2007; Neumark-Sztainer et al. 2006). It is important to note that eating disorders have the highest mortality rate among all mental health disorders (Smink et al., 2012). If we continue to allow the media to construct a narrowly-defined beauty standard which is often unrealistic, we are becoming bystanders of the destruction and murdering of young souls.
Be comfortable with your body and love your body even though it may be hard at the very beginning. Just like what Miley Cyrus said, the only way to achieve beauty is to feel it from inside without breaking down into individual physical attributes! We ARE beautiful even when we are imperfect and flawed!
“Pretty, pretty please
Don’t you ever, ever feel
Like you’re less than, less than perfect
Pretty, pretty please
If you ever, ever feel
Like you’re nothing, you are perfect to me
Cohen, R., Fardouly, J., Newton-John, T., & Slater, A. (2019). # BoPo on Instagram: An experimental investigation of the effects of viewing body positive content on young women’s mood and body image. New Media & Society, 21(7), 1546-1564.
Cohen, R., Newton-John, T., & Slater, A. (2020). The case for body positivity on social media: Perspectives on current advances and future directions. Journal of health psychology, 1359105320912450.
Coyne, S. M., Davis, E. J., Warburton, W., Stockdale, L., Abba, I., & Busby, D. M. (2021). Mirror, mirror on the wall: The effect of listening to body positive music on implicit and explicit body esteem. Psychology of Popular Media, 10(1), 2.
Cwynar-Horta, J. (2016). The commodification of the body positive movement on Instagram. Stream: Culture/Politics/Technology, 8(2), 36-56
Marjorie J. Hogan, Victor C. Strasburger. (2008). Body image, eating disorders, and the media. Adolesc Med, 19, 521-546.
Kim, J. H., & Lennon, S. J. (2007). Mass media and self-esteem, body image, and eating disorder tendencies. Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, 25(1), 3-23.
Neumark-Sztainer D, Paxton SJ, Hannan PJ, Haines J, Story M. Does body satisfaction matter?Five-year longitudinal associations between body satisfaction and health behaviors in adolescent females and males. J Adolesc Health. 2006;39(2):244–251
Smink, FR, Van Hoeken, D, Hoek, HW (2012) Epidemiology of eating disorders: Incidence, prevalence and mortality rates. Current Psychiatry Reports 14: 406–414.
Stevens, A., & Griffiths, S. (2020). Body Positivity (# BoPo) in everyday life: An ecological momentary assessment study showing potential benefits to individuals’ body image and emotional wellbeing. Body Image, 35, 181-191.
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