Everything Is Content - Everything In Conversation: Bikini Tax

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

Happy Hump day to you and your lovely lady lumps - and lovely lady lumps we shall be discussing! *** Trigger warning, there is discussion of eating disorders, diet culture, exercise addiction and more ***First there was ‘nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’, then there was ‘beach body ready’, and then there was a brief respite when we were all told that 'every body was a bikini body'. But now, in 2025, it seems that all of those narratives exist at the same time, creating a sort of cognitive dissonance that has us all saying one thing, and feeling another.The current tiktok trend is bikini tax, the price to pay for getting into a cozzy, apparently, is making yourself smaller…So have we really made any progress when it comes to what makes a bikini body? Is it worse than ever before?We hope you enjoy, please do rate, review and follow the show, it helps others' to find us, and us to keep making it :) B,R,O xxHow To Have A Body In Summer - Ismene Ormonde Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What's better than a well marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy zero dollar delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. I'm Beth. I'm Rachero.

And I'm Anoni. And this is Everything in Conversation. The episode where we join forces with you, our hive mind, to discuss a topic that's on everybody's lips. Remember, if you want to take part in these extra episodes, just follow us on Instagram at Everything Is Content Pod. That's where we decide on topics and get all of your juiciest opinions and hottest takes.

But first, the headlines from the EIC Newsroom. The former president, Joe Biden, has been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Mr. Biden was the oldest person to ever serve as a president, with concerns about his health raised regularly during his campaign for re-election last year. In a statement on social media, former President Barack Obama said, Michelle and I are thinking of the entire Biden family. Gary Lineker will leave his presenting roles at the BBC sooner than planned. His departure comes after he shared an Instagram post about Zionism that included a drawing of a rat historically used as an anti-Semitic insult.

In a new statement, Lineker says, quote, I recognize the error and upset that I caused and reiterate how sorry I am. After much debate and discussion, festivals in London's Brockwell Park will still go ahead this summer. There had been some confusion and uncertainty after a High Court judge ruled in favour of campaigners who launched a legal challenge against Lambeth Council saying that the planning permission needed to hold that many events was unlawful. Despite this, Brockwell Live, the collective behind the series of festivals due to take place, which includes City Splash, Field Day and Mighty Hoopla, have issued a statement to say, quote, all events in the series will

go ahead as planned. We take our stewardship of Brockwell Park seriously. In a speech at the K-Ring Women in Motion Awards at Cannes Film Festival, Nicole Kidman yet again reinforced her commitment to working with female filmmakers saying, We need to give women better roles, particularly as they get older. So please write them. We're here and we can prove to you that we will make money for you. Back in 2017, she made a declaration that she would work with a female film director every 18 months and she has since exceeded that goal, working with 27 female directors. Former Little Mix singer, Jessie Nelson,

has announced the birth of her twin daughters. In a post on Instagram, the 33-year-old said the two girls were born prematurely at 31 weeks on Thursday, adding, we are so blessed they are here with us, healthy and fighting strong, we've never felt more in love. The twins are called Ocean Jade and Story Monroe. Rapper Drake has shared a petition asking California's governor

to pardon fellow Canadian rapper Tory Lanez, who was attacked last week in prison. "'Come home soon,' Drake wrote on his Instagram story with a link to the petition. Also FYI, Tory Lanez is in prison for shooting Megan Thee Stallion in the foot." Taylor Swift's finally premiered a track from her highly anticipated reputation, Taylor's

Version album on an episode of The Handmaid's Tale. Her song, Look What You Made Me Do, Taylor's Version, was used in the opening scene of season six's ninth episode on Monday, in a scene where Elizabeth Moss, who plays June Osborne, leads a revolt against the commanders of Gilead. Sesame Street is heading to Netflix. The popular children's series and Netflix have struck a deal after President Donald Trump pulled funding for the free-to-air channel Public Broadcasting Service, e.g. PBS, ending a federal grant called Ready to Learn that helped fund their children's games and educational shows. A spokesperson for the Department of Education

said that the Ready to Learn grants were funding quote, racial justice educational programming and that quote, the Trump Department of Education will prioritize funding that supports meaningful learning and improving student outcomes, not divisive ideologies and woke propaganda. Peppa Pig has a brand new sister as Mummy Pig celebrated the birth of her brand new child, her third child, Evie Pig, on the 20th of May at 5.43am. The news was shared on Good Morning Britain and mother and child pig are both doing very well for anyone who cares. James Corden is rumoured to be considering a run for Mayor of London. The 46-year-old

allegedly revealed his political ambition in a private conversation at the BAFTA Television Awards last week, the London Standard has reported. And that's all from the EIC Newsroom this week. Just before you listen to this episode, we want to flag that there will be mentions of eating disorder content, eating disorders, diet culture and exercise addiction. First, there was nothing tastes as good as Skinny Feels. Then there was Beachbody Ready. And then there was a brief respite where we were all told that everybody was bikini body.

And now in 2025, it seems that both of those things are kind of coexisting at the same time, creating a cognitive dissonance that has us all saying one thing and perhaps feeling another. Beth found a beautiful sub-sack by Ismini Ormonda, which we'll share in the show notes and you have to read. And she writes, because summer is body, it's not just that I'm wearing less this time of year, it's that summer is about experiencing and savoring the heat,

the ice cream, the water, the breeze. There are no layers to shroud me from sensation. I sweat and swim and dance and run and eat and drink and lie very, very still. I feel and I feel and I feel. How can I forget my body when it's almost summer?" And whilst we shouldn't want to forget our bodies, I think sometimes the way that social media and just general conversations around women's bodies make us feel about like our corporeal selves means that sometimes you do kind of want to dissociate. And the current TikTok trend is actually, I don't know if you guys have seen this, I hadn't heard of this before this year, but bikini tax where like the price to pay for getting into Cosy apparently is making yourself smaller, which is I think,

quite depressing. So I wanted to ask you both, do you fall victim to this or have you managed to block out the noise? I definitely fall victim to it. So I definitely relate to anyone who might be listening to this and thinks, I know that it's still something I really struggle with and I wish I didn't. And rather than pretending, you know, I am above thoughts or insecurities or vulnerabilities around body image, especially with summer, I particularly find summer quite triggering. And I think it is just like the fact of wearing less clothes. I definitely would love this to be a space of working out how to, how to get there, how to get to the good place. And also just knowing that we're all in the trenches for anyone who is going through it too. I'm deep,

deep, deep there, but I also have been trying some new techniques recently, which we will come into, I'm sure, of how to be kinder to myself and how to not make it worse when I do get those horrible thoughts or if I'm on a holiday and a bad body image mood strikes. I have got a few techniques under my belt, which I am happy and would love to share. I would also love you to share those because I think that's it. It's quite a communal effort and it is like when you're on holiday and when you're with good people, like a partner you love that understands you, your friends, your family, it is okay to just have those days where you do say to them, I feel like this, I feel like this, this is hard, this is why I'm not in a great mood. And to have someone else be like, I get it

and kind of guide you through it. Like that makes all the difference in the world. And especially this year I have found it's taken me a lot more to battle against body image noise and food fears. I heavily blame Skinny Talk and that kind of poison in the well. I think all of us who've been on these long journeys with our bodies, I went such a distance in liking myself, feeling neutral, not being bothered, kind of embracing change as a part of life that now, and it could be aging again, like my body is changing and it looks far different as we approach this summer than it did 10 years ago because that's how bodies work and things slow and things widen. And I'm quite disappointed. I'm trying not to be disappointed in myself, but I'm quite disappointed to find myself here. And I think

I'm taking it one day at a time, but like we're all people in the world and the poison that is being slopped out into the ecosystem is going to kind of enter our bloodstreams as well. And everyone I talk to is feeling to some degree this dread about the summer. And I think it's a Zempik, I think it's Skinny Talk, I think it is this woke 360, no, woke 180 where people are going, it's actually okay to be fatphobic. And it's really, it's getting to me a lot. So I'm glad we're talking about this. And Nini, how are you feeling?

On the one hand, I don't, I feel it. And I have those feelings and especially the skinny, the specific narrative around like not eating and being skinny, I find quite triggering and difficult because that takes me back to when I was at school. Whereas when there was the period when it was all like about being quite muscly because that's my natural body shape and that's the kind of people I follow. I found that quite easy, not my natural body shape, but it's kind of the shape that I am in. Then

I was like, oh, there's a body shape that's kind of like in fashion and I fit that. So that's great. And then when lots of recently the people that I followed for years who've always been quite like gym people have suddenly gone to go be like change that shape to be really skinny, I found that a bit hard. That being said, I don't act on it in the way I used to. So when I was at school and in my early twenties, I would genuinely like not eat before a holiday. Whereas now I might think about the fact that I wish that I looked better in a bikini, but I don't actually do anything about it, which I think is a good thing. So there's still like an element of, like a moment of insecurity and leading up to it, I might panic, but actually when I get there,

once I'm on the beach, I don't care. But there would have been a time when actually I would have like gone to extreme lengths to make sure that, and then I would have also had an awful holiday because I would have refused to eat ice cream. I would have skipped lunch. I wouldn't have pasta, which is so stupid because to me a holiday is a bit like in that sub-stack piece. The whole point of me of going like on holiday is a lot of it is about the food and the indulgence and this reframing of like being the thinnest you can be on holiday. It's like the fun thing to do on holiday is to eat as much as you can, drink as much as you can and probably not move that much unless you're

exercising for fun kind of thing. Definitely and that was something that helped me last time I was away when the thoughts were coming up and to try and I guess appease the thoughts my next step would have been okay let me do something to make myself feel better such as a controlling behaviour such as a I don't know, a feeling that maybe I should move more or like walk more to like help that thought. But really, as soon as that came up and I noticed it, that's the first step, noticing it. Second thing was, rather than trusting the thought, I kind of had a conversation with the thought. I just almost like sat it down in a chair in my mind and just said, I get

that you're upset, I get that you're stressed, that you think that I look a certain way, but right now I'm trying to have a nice time. And I won't remember you, but I will remember if I change this holiday and I don't enjoy myself if I eat less or if I move in a different way to try and appease you. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to try and reassure you, I've actually got this, I'm having a really lovely time. It's important that I make memories. I'm sorry, but I'm just not going to listen to you right now. And then that might sound a bit mad, but it really helped because it was almost like I was coaxing myself through the situation, having a conversation with myself and just every time it kept up, like a, I guess a child who wants

to be noticed, I just kind of reassured it that actually everything's okay. I'm having lovely memories. This is a holiday. I'm supposed to enjoy myself. So it didn't feel like the thought was attacking me. It felt like I was almost reassuring and coaxing it back into just not submission, but I guess just relaxing. But I don't think it is silly. I think, I mean, there's so much in like mental health literature that proves that whether you call it reparenting or like in a dialogue work, having those really fair, really loving conversations with yourself, just the most effective of so many of us in reprogramming and rewiring. And I mean, obviously we're all talking from the perspective of we're all straight, straight sides. None of us experienced fat phobia from the outside, but you know, so I'm a size 12. I can buy clothes everywhere

I go. I'm never, I'm not going to be abused in public for my body. It's so difficult, I think, to align those things to know like I am on the side of fat liberation and true body positivity and just decency. But then I'm still having these thoughts and feelings. And we got a message from Alina who said, quote, my thoughts are simply that I would never judge anyone for what they wear or look like on the beach. And in fact, the less conventionally attractive, not skinny hairless toned, the more I'm like, fuck yes. And yet I cannot seem to extend that same kindness myself working on it every day. And I really related to that message, but it is true, summer is about

pleasure and indulgence and no good summer has ever been decided by how hard your abs are or how toned your arse is. It's basically about being with people you love, seeking pleasure, even like sex and connection and silliness, all these things that are a lot easier to access in the summer. That is what decides it. It's very bodily. It's like hot sun on skin, like salty fish, buttery butter on a corn on the cob at a barbecue. And I think it's deciding in this kind of slight before time, am I going to seek that or am I going to have this punishing workout routine and strict calorie deficit diet and nonstop food rules or is it going to be fun and relaxation? I honestly, I used to think, oh, I can have it all. I don't think you can. I think you can have a balance of,

yeah, eating wonderful food and also exercising if that's what your bag is. But sculpted model-esque body, if I was to have that, I could not have anything else. I could not have a glass of wine in the summer. I could not have a moment of fun. And I think that is what it comes down to this question, this internal question like, will I have this or will I have that? Sometimes when we talk about this, I worry that it's going to sound like I'm being disingenuous because I am someone that exercises a lot. I've been like bigger than I am now and I've been much, much smaller. And when I was much, much smaller, I remember when I was like doing a bikini competition, it was the leanest I've ever been. And I went on a girls holiday to Spain. I was body checking the entire time. I was really conscious of what I was eating. And what you said,

Ritera, is something that I've learned over years and years, which is like, you're on the holiday, just enjoy it. There used to be times when my really bad body dysmorphia, really bad disorder eating when I was at school. And if I woke up in the morning and decided that I didn't like how my body looked, it would genuinely ruin my entire day. It would put me into like the worst mood in the world. And I've learned with age and experience and through trying to overcome those things, it's like there's nothing, there's no amount of self-flagellation and mental punishment that is going to change how you look in this moment.

The only thing you can do is just try and be in the moment. And when I think back to how much it used to affect me, it does make me really sad because now I can, I do get those thoughts. They definitely have never completely gone away, but I don't think anyone is able, I think Bella Hadid, and I mean, definitely Bella Hadid, but you know, women that we see

as the most beautiful women in the world will have moments of insecurity and feel like they're not good enough, but you simply, women that we see as the most beautiful women in the world will have moments of insecurity and feel like they're not good enough, but you simply cannot live your life trying to preemptively feel like disgusted by yourself. You just have to be there. And also I think another thing you have to remember is you don't have to take pictures.

I think this is a newer layer that's happened in the last decade where loads of our fears of holidays is that like we have to post a bikini picture. You don't actually have to take a picture of yourself in your swimming costume or in your bikini if you don't want to. Or if you do take a picture, you don't have to post a bikini picture. You don't actually have to take a picture of yourself in your swimming costume or in your bikini if you don't want to. Or if you do take a picture, you don't have to post it online.

You don't have to prove anything to anyone and especially not yourself. Like there is no tax to pay to be on the beach. But we did have a really interesting message which I wanted to read because I think this too is from Monique and she said, on beach bodies, I haven't fully thought this through so it feels a bit of an undeveloped thought

but like all these body positivity messages are actually just reminders that our bodies are still being judged. Everybody is a beach body, it feels like a bit of a haughty defiance of other people's judgment. Almost a Mel Robbins-esque take on the fact that other people will judge your body but just let them and don't let it bother you.

My body is still at the forefront of the conversation, reminding me that it's still at the forefront of what I'll be judged on. And I often think about this, you know when I see these videos of women and they're like squeezing their bum so that they're like, say like comes up or they're like holding their tummy

or they're like pointing out whatever it is that they wanna say is, you know, this is normal. It just makes me think all you're doing is kind of highlighting inverted commas problematic areas. And it's still, we're still just talking about women's bodies. Like I actually think it has the reverse effect. And I thought Monique's point on that was really, really good.

Yeah, that what you said and what Monique said really resonates for me as well, because I haven't found solace with trying to love every corner of myself into making it all feel good and okay. Not even okay, just exceptional. Every part of me is exceptional. For some reason that hasn't squashed the thoughts in any way or the problematic feelings that I have around my body. It hasn't made them worse, but I think it just makes me feel almost isolated because

if I watch a video like that, then it makes me feel even less connected to people because I just think, well, I can't feel that. So I guess I'm stuck where I am. Whereas I've always thought that neutrality is a much more realistic goal and a much healthier goal. But it's so hard when we're constantly talking about bodies, like you said, to reach neutrality because regardless if you're trying to reach that point, all you're being fed are videos, messages, content constantly just making you think about it, reflect

on it, consider it, critique it, try and love it, fail to love it. Why can't we just truly get to a point where we just stop even discussing it at all? Or I guess even, yeah, the pinching of the skin. I don't know, it just, it makes me feel so uncomfortable because at the end of the day, it just still, as Manique said, makes me view myself through the lens of what are people looking at me thinking? What do people see when they look at me? Whereas we have to really detach ourselves from that. We have to stop seeing the lens of other people staring at us and then trying to, you know, imagine what they're seeing. We're just constantly getting ourselves into a cycle of perceivment, judgment, criticism, shame. And I think if we just detached all

of that, it would be much easier to feel better about ourselves. But that's just not going to happen. I feel like Instagram, TikTok, all of these social media platforms rely on all of us thinking and looking and consuming other people's bodies. So we'll never be neutral about it because the messaging is rife and it's constant. And I also think in that pursuit for neutrality and how we get there is the question of how we do actually unwittingly and also sometimes not while realizing that it is quite sinister, we do it to one another. Like I used to have a running page, very short lived where I was tracking myself figuring out how to run, realizing I loved running. On there I was doing a charity challenge for Hospice where I was running 5k every day for

a month. I was really loving the community there. I was joking around with people, asking about trainers, all of these things. As it got a little bit bigger, I started getting messages from women asking for before and after pictures, progress pictures, asking how much weight I was losing. And I was doing it like really in the thick of my grief to raise some money and to challenge myself. Like weight loss had not even come into it. I mean, 5K a day is not, it was not super challenging. It's not super hard on your body. It's not like an endurance challenge where you expect you're going to lose a lot of weight. It was kind of just like, instead of doing 10,000 steps, I was running it. And it got so much that I just abandoned it. It ruined

the fun and it sucked it out of what I was doing. I mean, I did the challenge, but I just didn't track it the same way. And it was really well-meaning women, I do believe, who had just been programmed to want to know, okay, but what will this do to my body? And I wonder actually, Anony, you're very much in the fitness space. This is something that you love to do and are good at. Have you ever had, have you ever had to like steer parts of your audience or have your posts ever escaped containment and you've had like an influx of people wanting like asking similar questions, wanting to know like how many calories you burn, like what your body looked like before, or it been like more positive on your page? Well my whole page started off at the beginning

in I would literally post before and afters because that's where it all kind of began. I was someone that wasn't really, I was never, my body was never a socially unacceptable size but I because of diet culture and stuff never thought it was good enough so I got really into the gym and then I became very small and And so I used to post that. And then after about a year, the conversation culturally started to change and I started to learn more about diet culture. And also I had this journey where all my life

I'd had all these body image issues and I got, I always say issues like I'm the queen, got these issues and then I got to the smallest I'd ever been, I've said this seven times, but like And then I got to the smallest it'd ever been. I've said this seven times, but like it wasn't the gold at the end of the rainbow. I was grumpy, I lost my libido. Everything was kind of,

the world was still just as bad as it was before. I was just much smaller and much hungrier. And that was kind of like a light bulb moment where I was like, oh, okay, being thin, nah, is not gonna solve my problems. And that's when my page started to change. I stopped talking about what I was eating, stopped talking about like weight I'd lost. I think I archived all of my before and after pictures. And then my audience kind of came

along with me on that journey. And in fact, actually they would say, sometimes it would go back the other way where once I think of COVID, I posted a picture, I was like, I'm really happy. I think COVID's actually got me over my gym addiction, which I maybe didn't realize I had, because if I couldn't go to the gym, I used to get really anxious. But being in COVID meant I couldn't. But I posted that alongside a picture of me

kind of sat on the floor in my gym kit and people got quite cross because they were like, you still exist in a very like lean body. So actually my audience then became even more versed in the language, or like the correctness of ways to talk about bodies and exercise. It's really complicated because they're always, those two things are always linked. It's very difficult to detach your physicality from exercise. And so I think

it's like how you approach it. But my page now, no, I do get people asking me what I eat. I just don't really engage with it and it's not really what I talk about. And my body does change. Sometimes I lose weight, sometimes I gain weight. Monthly I do on my period. I just try not to talk about my body, even though I do show my body. But I think it's that thing of drawing attention to it.

Again, it's like what we said before with the, there's some accounts where sometimes I do feel like, is this body positivity or is this actually kind of like click baity ways of knowing that, you know, the thing that works in the algorithm is seeing bodies. I don't know, it's difficult. I think a lot of my cohort of people that were in fitness when I was coming up, we all have this similar mentality.

What's really shocked me and actually we had a message from Emily saying, we're regressing and it's suddenly cool to be skinny and mean again. And that those two things together is actually something I'm seeing very slim women with reels and I'm sure they're like to get engagement, but they'll be like, everyone says it's luck. It's not luck, bitch. I don't eat and I walk like a million steps a day. And it's like this kind of harsh, this is the cold harsh truth of what it means to be thin and thinness is above all the most important. And I've seen other things being like, when you're thin, it doesn't really matter what you wear. It doesn't matter if you've washed your hair, you just look

more put together. Like the morality of thinness, the obsession with this idea that women who are able to control what they eat and basically diminish their own pleasures are more attractive, more morally superior and worth more. And that was something that we spent ages fighting against. And now it's actually coming out. People are saying the quiet part out loud in a way that we didn't used to. At least there was a bit of lying around it before. People kind of be like, oh, I just feel way better when I don't have a carb. Now they're like, I don't eat carbs because I want to be a size zero. So does that answer your question? I kind of went off on one. I think it did. I think it certainly did. I think we did actually do an episode about

someone called the skinny influencer, Ruchira and I months and months ago, which I think was a great episode. You should go back and listen to it. And it touched on all of those things. Is it better to say the quiet part out loud? Is it better that we, as a collective, really understand what it costs someone? Because there was that myth for a while about it's all balance, it's all this. Actually, no, it's not attainable. There was also quite recently, there was a scandal on TikTok. I don't know if either of you have seen it. It's sort of spilled out into the mainstream now where a woman left a Pilates class and made a video saying, if you're 200 pounds, you shouldn't be in a Pilates class. And I think Vogue have just done a piece on Emma Spector wrote a great piece

about just this whole idea. And I believe like in the ensuing backlash, this woman has lost her job and issued like several tearful apologies. But I think what strikes me about that is the meanness. It is actually in this kind of like a zempic conservative anti-woke world, that cruelty is really making its way back. And I think what strikes me, I think we're learning to like fear our own bodies and police other people's bodies and poison one another in this really hideous lateral way. And it's this idea that you have to have a certain body to experience life, to go to the beach, to exercise, to enter a class that you have paid for with your own money. And that is why, I mean, it's fat phobia. and that is why I think fatphobia equals brain rot. If you entertain, if you kind of perpetuate that idea

you are a fool with an empty head, it's brainless and it's only for dull people, it is literally anti-life, it wants to keep fat people out of society and I think that is at the crux of this at the root of this. Yeah on the plot I saw such a good response. I didn't see the original thing, but I saw the response on Twitter so I had to like retroactively go back and be like, what's happened here? And someone made such a good point, which is that Pilates of all exercises

is actually amazing for different sized bodies and different mobilities because it is low intensity. You're not putting loads of strain on the muscles. It's actually a great thing for people who are older or who find other exercises more difficult. And what's the problem? This always happens and is that exercise, someone actually said something, not someone that I know, but someone that I was in a room with said something about pointed at someone which is awful. Where was I? Or maybe it was when I was running my half-mouth and pointed at someone in a bigger body and was like, oh

wow, that said something quite rude. And I was like, that is such a mad reaction to have someone moving their body because they're running and you're standing still firstly. So what you want about. And Pilates didn't used to be, it's that what people call it like Princess Pilates. Pilates has been around forever.

People of all shapes and sizes have always done Pilates. In fact, actually, yeah, it's often like older women love Pilates. It's only because there's been this whole new trend about it, which has come with a whole clothing concept as well, that people now think that Pilates has an image, which it never used to before. And then people start gatekeeping and think it's about this one thing. But exercise is for everyone of all shapes and sizes of whatever age you are. And it's so disgusting when people love to shame others for moving their body. And then that's just like, what do you expect? And even, and also no one should have to move their body with the intention

of losing weight, but say that that was what someone was doing and they existed in a fat body and then you're being shamed for it. It's like, sorry, what do you want them to do then? They just can't exist in public spaces, which is ultimately kind of what it comes down to. And I've also seen, and we've had quite a few messages about as Zempik, you know, kind of being part of the issue here, of course, because now that people are seeing like, there's actually like a medical solution to fatness,

so it just shouldn't exist kind of thing. I don't know if you had people talking about this, but that we've spoken about as Zempik and we've spoken about, you know, being fearful of it when it's used by people that already exist in straight sized bodies to become much, much smaller. But a lot of conversations I've been listening to from fat people is fat people saying that there's a lot of skinny people getting stressy about azempic in a way where people that have

never existed in a fat body before kind of casting judgment on fat people having access to losing weight in a way that might be more streamlined than if you did conventionally diet and exercise version. So there's another thing that's happening as well, which I think is people who have worked to exist in very small bodies or their lives, who've maybe given up, restricted and sacrificed because they see a lot of value in existing in those bodies are also suddenly feeling fearful of the fact that other people might have access to that privilege. There's like a weird, it's like two, a twofold thing going on. Have you kind of heard that side of the conversation? God, that is so grim. I haven't, I haven't heard that, but I can, I can totally imagine

that also like a almost like a scarcity mindset of protecting and upholding thinness as being, um, I guess, you know, there's like members club that only certain people should be able to get in. Maybe it D like people being worried that it devalues it. It's so, so grim. All of it is so grim from every angle. There was something you mentioned about Pilates as well. And this is the Hill that I want to die on, that I'm obsessed with the history of sports and movement and the almost like rewriting of narratives of wellness and sports

as well. I was going to do a podcast about it years ago, it kind of fell through. But with Pilates, it was developed basically in the 1920s by this guy called Joseph Pilates. And it was about helping prisoners move their bodies in more mindful ways and helping them get fitness in a way that was accessible. So it has a really interesting background. And also there was a woman called Kathleen Stanford Grant, who was black. He played a significant role in popularizing it in America. But I think it's crazy how it's become synonymous these days with, you know, tiny bodies, tiny white women who wear, I don't know, aloe and go to these like £30 reformer classes when

so many of the movements that we do, yoga, running, I don't know, Pilates, like I said, these are things that are meant to be accessible. They're not meant to be about the size you're in. They're not meant to be about aesthetics. They're literally not meant to be about how you look or losing weight or being any kind of body size. They are about the joy of moving your body and moving them in these beautiful, mindful ways. So yeah, I don't know. That's just another angle to this whole thing as well. That even something that's meant to be accessible for everyone that's meant to make us feel at home in our bodies has been weaponised against us with the kind of fetishisation of who should be doing these things. It's really depressing. Because the central question we had here was, does this still exist? Does the idea of a beach body persist? Because the photo that you posted on our Instagram, Anoni, was from that egregious billboard from about 10 years ago, which was that very toned woman on the yellow

background, it was for like a protein powder company for a weight loss supplement or powder. And it was banned in the UK, I think it was shown for months and months afterwards on this absolutely enormous billboard in Time Square in America. But we kind of asked, has this just been repackaged? I think we're answering this as we go, which yes. Hannah said it's never fully gone away, but the way it's repackaged has become more thinly veiled in the past year or two. She mentions Azempec, 75 hard challenge gut health supplements, et cetera. I think that's in. Advertisers are guilty of this, or at least they are guilty of then

in the backlash jumping on that and using it to sell their products. I remember the razor company Estrid, and I pronounce it, did a kind of reactionary campaign about women feeling beach body ready. Then they did a beach campaign of more diverse bodies. Dove had a similar campaign with a seat in the sun push, which was after I think it was about half the women of Brazil felt that they had stopped going to the beach because they felt that their bodies were not acceptable and they did these sort of size inclusive deck chairs on various beaches. And it's like brands continue to go to war with one another on the battlefield of like our own

bodies about literally the existence of larger bodies. And I think that must be a very exhausting thing. It speaks to what we're talking about, about neutrality and just being able to exist. There's no space to just exist when you've got big brands using the conversation to sell their wares. And obviously I think it's far better to have campaigns like the Dove one and like the Estrid one. But still, what a hideous media environment to just exist in. I know we know this, but marketing and advertising is designed to make us feel and emote and then panic so that we rely on products to kind of fill that feeling or to satiate that feeling. And every time I come back to that, it just makes me so angry. And it should make all of us angry

because not all of the problems that we face, but many of the problems that we're discussing come back to that, that we are being weaponized and utilized for products and for gain. And I don't know if you guys have seen this, but there's a billboard ad campaign at the minute for a VPN service. And it keeps trying to encourage paranoia about your Google search history. And it's, it's really made me feel quite icky to be honest, because it's something like you might be okay with what's in your search history, but would a journalist? And it's really trying to make you feel like surveillance culture is all around

you, so you need to rely on a VPN. But yeah, I don't know. It reminds me of this where we just keep coming back to the anxieties we face. A deliberate, they're intentional, they're crafted, curated, encouraged, so that we rely on products or anxieties that are fed by spending money to satiate them. Now, yeah, it's so insidious and it's so scary. When you zoom out, you do feel a bit like, oh, I'm so silly for buying into this.

We know, because that's the truth of it is we know this is all ridiculous, but it's the same thing with anything when it kind of comes towards like feminists or anything. It's like you have to, you have this internal battle of like, do I do the thing that I know is logically true or do I have to conform because the rest of society hasn't caught up? And sometimes it is hard to expect an individual to go, no, I'm going to exist in my body just as it is and I'm going to let my hair grow out and I'm not going to, because there are, it's not just that you might feel insecure, there are real world consequences we've spoken about with like privilege and stuff. But on the specific topic that we're talking about with beach bodies, I was just thinking about it and I think that body image and conversations

around it have been both exacerbated and maybe in some ways helped through social media. It's always those two things seem to happen in tandem. You have a wave of sort of like extreme oppressive conformity, and then you'll have a retaliation of activism and liberations and conversations trying to undo that. So those two things, whichever side you fall on are kind of always happening. But I think this year specifically, it has been the conversation around beach bodies.

There was a trend on TikTok with Kapsing being like, see you in the tiniest bikini in a few months, or if you lock in now, then you'll be ready in June, or I'm going to pay bikini tax. So I think there's been a conversation around being in shape and like having a great body, which has been pervasive for the last decade and way more than it used to be. And that like the lay person should be looking like a Victoria's Secret model. But I do think it's literally a trend. I think something starts off as a trend. It proliferates, people post about it and then it has like these big real world consequences. And I think sometimes these things, do you know what actually they said this on the Polyester Magazine magazine pod the other day, which I thought was really

interesting. It was like, sometimes we forget the internet is not a group chat and there's some things you can put in your WhatsApp group to your girlfriends, but some things you shouldn't put online because sometimes they get away from you and then becomes something bigger. And I do think this beach body turn, but it could have even been one person said something and everyone was like, that's actually a really good idea. I'm going to post a real about that. Not even necessarily meaning it, just thinking it was interesting. And it genuinely becomes this massive thing because I don't, I think we had

kind of tried to squash out the beach body idea, even though secretly everyone was telling you the idea of having a beach body 365 days a year, not just when you're on the beach, but yeah, it's this, and maybe it's just generational that people are they miss that era we went through where we tried to get rid of it. But people are talking about this with absolutely no, there's no irony or not used to have shame. But it's very much like, I'm going to lose weight to be on the beach. And I said what I said. But and precisely that the base that that tiny body, no,, that tiny bikini on the beach was such a, in its essence, lovely, positive. It's like,

I'm going to put my tiny bikini on. It's not that the bikini is tiny-sized, it's that it's so revealing. That was actually quite a sex-positive thing. But of course, then it is co-opted as the body positivity movement was, which body positivity was a fat liberation movement, which was then co-opted by very muscular, very slim women. I remember Louise Thompson, she wrote a book, which was initially called Body Positive with Louise, something like that. And then she was encouraged to change it and she did change it. She changed it to something like Live Well With Louise. I think she took that on board and realized that no, that isn't what she was doing and that there's a history to this movement that is not about fitness. And even at the moment, I'm getting so many ads on my TikTok specifically for exercise and diet coaches and eating plans for summer

specifically. And it's interesting because my algorithm on TikTok, I don't watch any exercise stuff on there. I'm not a fitness girlie, like I swim and I hike, but I don't watch any exercise stuff on there. I'm not a fitness girl. I swim and I hike, but I don't really watch videos about it. What I do watch is I watch a lot of food content, not ever low calorie stuff. I watch actually really decadent meal, dinner party meals and treat stuff and baking. I'm quite confused and I'm wondering maybe it is just the fact that I'm a woman and it knows I'm a 31 year old woman, so it's saying, yeah, probably like the diet stuff as well. You're pretty much our demographic. Or is it more sinister? I'm watching a lot of food content, so they think she might want to lose weight. I don't know what

it is, but I'm willing to bear that it is something a little bit sinister there that I just fit the bill for someone that they think would want this. And every time I see those, actually, I think we have not taken a step beyond nine, 10 years ago, when that big disgusting yellow tube ad with the, are you beat body ready? Was coming because I think it's all exactly the same, that bitch, just with a deeper algorithm. Well, you might be onto something now because the book that was released, which I actually really want us to talk about called Careless People by Sarah Wynne Williams, who is a former Facebook executive, talked about how Metta would target teenage girls who had posted and then deleted a selfie with ads about diet and weight loss products and stuff because they recognize that if someone posts something and deletes it, they're probably feeling insecure. So these algorithms are really cruelly insidious. So it wouldn't surprise me if they do look

at the data behind your account and go, 31 year old woman, she's watching this kind of video. Even if you're watching content about people being single or something, there'll be algorithms that will be working out what kind of person will be, could we kind of tap into whatever insecurity? And when I read that, I was like, God, that makes me feel sick. Especially if these are girls as young as like 14, they're targeting them with stuff. And I do have fitness content and stuff on my page, but even I, TikTok is worse for it actually, because Instagram, I think I've followed the same people forever and I'm quite specific, but I don't really know how TikTok works.

So it doesn't, I haven't really built up an algorithm yet. And I do get all of these really like promoting really unhealthy habits, but the worst, and I must've hung on a tweet for too long because I get ED Twitter all the time now, which is people with quite extreme eating disorders, posting the food that they've eaten, posting thinspo, posting fatter bodies as anti-inspiration. And I can't believe

these posts don't get taken down. These people are, you know, really in the throes of extreme disordered eating. And it just exists on the internet in a way that I used to seek out pro anorexia websites when I was at school. And I used to seek out pro-anorexia websites when I was at school. And I used to go on Tumblr as well and seek out those kind of images. But they were ever so slightly buried. Whereas this is just, you could just be happily scrolling one day and you will see something which, if I wasn't in a different place as I am now, could have absolutely completely

spun me out and taken me to a completely different place. I really wanted to read Sarah's message just as a final touchstone, because I think this really is, this really resonated with me, and it's definitely something that I am gonna make myself keep coming back to after this episode. So Sarah said,

"'At risk of saying, go outside and touch grass, what's been so healing and grounding when I get in my head about beach bodies and whether I do or don't have one is actually going to the beach and seeing bodies. Realising that while media, social, legacy media implies that we're all striving for this ideal, there are countless everyday people who throw on a bikini on their big, small, soft, dimpled, imperfect bodies and go to the beach and have a ball. Literally, a trip to the beach is an antidote for me. Thank you so much for listening and for all of your opinions and takes on this topic. We love being in conversation with you all.

Remember to give us a follow on Instagram and TikTok at everythingiscontentpod and please, please, please give us a review wherever you listen. And if you haven't already, we would love if you followed us on your podcast player app. We'll see you as always on Friday. Bye. Bye. Friday. Bye!