In 2014, Meghan Trainor released “All About That Bass,” a song that not only spread a message, but built her brand based on body positivity. The song promoted self-acceptance and love for your natural body, regardless of industry standards or the “right” clothing size. Lines such as, “every inch of you is perfect from the bottom to the top,” encourages listeners to ignore negative comments about their weight and understand that beauty comes from everywhere. Trainor used musical lingo to convey her message through the main chorus line, “I’m all about that bass, no treble,” where the “bass” represents lower tones in music and in the song, symbolizes curves and a larger backside. Treble refers to the higher pitched musical tones and symbolizes the skinnier body frame. The idea of “no treble” means rejecting societal pressure to be super “2000s” thin or look like a Barbie doll, choosing to love one’s natural shape instead. For young minds at the time, especially me, this message changed the way I grew into myself.
Recently, Trainor has gone through a major 60 pound weight loss journey, admitting to the use of the GLP-1 drug Mounjaro for weight loss and to getting a boob job. GLP-1s are “glucagon-like peptides,” which are used for Type 2 Diabetes and blood sugar management, but also used for weight loss as they slow the food moving through the stomach, making you feel full for longer, and ultimately making it easier to eat less.
During a performance in 2025, Trainor changed the lines from “All About That Bass” from, “I ain’t no size two,” to “I got some new boobs.” This reflected her breast augmentation and was an ode to her weight loss and achieving her “dream body.” This lyrical change created a mass amount of online backlash. Fans called her change hypocritical of the brand that she built and felt let down as the song served as a body-positive anthem for larger individuals. Trainor has since admitted to not fully believing in the song’s original message when she wrote it a decade ago, but she hoped that she would end up believing it one day. Although her weight loss was due to medical issues such as gastroenteritis and a desire to be stronger, many celebrities do face societal pressure to be thinner and then receive backlash for their weight changes. Celebrities such as Ariana Grande and Jenna Ortega, and now Meghan Trainor, have gone through very intense, public weight loss journeys. GenZ and Alpha have begun calling Hollywood’s “Thin” trend the “Ozempidemic” in order to reference the use of Ozempic and other GLP-1s in unnatural Hollywood star weight loss.
Young people are beginning to experience a rise in body dissatisfaction and an increase in eating disorders due to this expectation of extreme thinness promoted by Hollywood. Although not fully reliable, users on Reddit generally agree that the widespread use of GLP-1 drugs has normalized an unattainable/unhealthy standard for growing, young, impressionable minds.
This raises a few questions that I will leave you with: Should we blame the celebrity and show them/their work hate for succumbing to societal pressure, or should we hate ourselves for creating an unrealistic standard for what people should look like? Should we let celebrities be the “standard” for what we want to look like? And who told us to follow what influencers/celebrities do rather than our own desires?
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As someone who grew up listening to “All About That Bass,” I remember how meaningful it was to hear a popular celebrity promote body positivity and encourage girls to love their natural bodies. Meghan Trainor has every right to make personal choices regarding her body and health, but changing the lyrics to celebrate her weight loss and breast augmentation felt hypocritical to many fans who connected with the song’s message originally. It seems disappointing that the body-positive image she created has now been replaced by the idea that people must change themselves to fit Hollywood standards. This also shows how much influence celebrities have over young people and how easily their personal choice can become unrealistic expectations for others. While people should not be judged for changes they make to their body, celebrities should recognize how their public image and message can affect the audience who once looked up to them.
As a child of the 2000s, I remember the outstanding impact of Meghan Trainor’s music and how positively it was received by girls my age. It was thought to be refreshing that a Hollywood figure would talk about body positivity and embrace a body not plauged by undereating, over-exercising, or other regimens. Now that the tables have turned and Meghan Trainor has fell into the skinny-trap alongside other Hollywood stars, the message seems to be that one cannot be happy in their own body and that people should absolutely customize their body to their liking. This message has been supported by dozens of other figures and serves to support the growing narrative that being natural can no longer be beautiful.
As a child of the 2000s, I remember the original overwhelmingly positive response to Meghan Trainor and her body positive music when it was initially released. It seemed as if being unapologetically yourself was in, and the anorexia of the early 2000s was finally out. Alas, in the face of Meghan Trainor’s weight loss journey, alongside various other celebrities, it feels more and more that this phase of body positivity was a farce. With influencers today pushing their experiences with peptides and some even portraying their medicated transformations as natural, it becomes clear that body standards are still as akin to “skinniness” as ever. While this is quite the unfortunate and extremely unhealthy reality it appears that the skinny standard is not shifting regardless of limited phases of body-positive rhetoric.