The release of Jon M. Chu’s Wicked: For Good has been the subject of much anticipation for the better part of a year, with its press coverage reaching impressive heights. This coverage, however, has reopened an unexpected conversation that has overshadowed the release’s celebration, and tainted the experience for some: weight loss.
As fans and critics have circulated more than their fair share of conjecture regarding the visible and seemingly extreme weight loss by multiple stars of the cast, I hesitate to add to the conversation. Commenting on any one’s body means commenting on an extremely personal health relationship of which you rarely have the full information.
My fear, however, is that this hesitation has stunted people’s abilities to talk about weight at all. It’s no secret that perceptions of weight have been deeply and problematically engrained in our culture. That conversation was opened with the fat acceptance movement of the 1960s and later with the coining of the term “body positivity” in the 1990s. The culture of shame and pressure have been identified and, as such, can begin to be deconstructed.
The body positivity movement, however, has not accomplished a full deconstruction of cultural expectations. In fact, recent years have seemingly presented a backslide. Not coincidentally, a rise in conservatism and the new recession has at times felt like a return to the body culture of the early 2000s and its recession. We are witnessing a meteoric rise of gym culture, Instagram model content, body modification and plastic surgery, and– as in the case of Wicked: For Good, the glamorized, ultrathin celebrity.
So why does this conversation seem particularly difficult to have? As I have mentioned, part of the body positivity movement is the deconstruction of shame around our bodies. This, in the past, has meant refraining from commenting on the weight of others, or “body checking” by bringing up appearances or comparing them. Unfortunately, the side effect of this has been a dampening of any conversation at all.
Everyone’s body is different, and should look different. That idea is at the core of deconstructing shame– we mustn’t pretend to know precisely what other bodies need, or that those needs are always the same. But rather than using that to avoid the conversation completely, it should give us reason to listen to other’s needs more, and to feel empowered to communicate our own, without feeling ashamed.
In preparing this article, I became more conscious of how rarely I discuss my relationship with my weight, even amongst my closest friends. I asked myself how it would feel for that to change, and, with my fair share of nervousness, mentioned my concerns about the current weight culture to my friends. Most of my friends told me they had also been deeply struggling with the same feelings for a long time.
My nervousness to discuss was replaced entirely, with regret that I hadn’t made myself open for my friends to talk to sooner.
Maggie Raker
Opinion Editor
