Pop's weighty issue: All About That Bass and other body-positive anthems

All About That Bass by Massachusetts singer-songwriter Meghan Trainor is shaping up as one of this year’s big hits. It’s topped the charts in Australia, gone top 20 in many European countries and is currently No 3 in America. Bearing in mind the British appetite for breezy, dance-ish pop helmed by female voices, the track should have no trouble repeating that success here when it’s released in October.

Yet its candy-coated, doo-wop-inspired cuteness is only part of the story – the true selling point is its unswerving body-positivism. “Yeah, it’s pretty clear, I ain’t no size two,” sings Trainor, vocally a reedy cross between Katy Perry and Taylor Swift. “But I can shake it like I’m supposed to do/ ’Cos I got that boom-boom that all the boys chase/ And all the right junk in all the right places.”

It’s the defiance of a woman who’s been made to feel she’s not the right size (later in the song she allows herself a dig at “skinny bitches”, and their “silicone Barbie doll” looks), but has decided to see her boom-boom as an asset rather than a flaw. Though we’re not privy to what she went through before arriving at self-acceptance, she has said that Grammy-nominated writer and producer Kevin Kadish had the song title but didn’t know what should come next. “And I immediately thought, “‘Booty. Bass. Thickness,’” she told Billboard. Bruno Mars’ Just the Way You Are was also an inspiration – the song speaks to people as a 2014 version of Christina Aguilera’s self-empowerment classic Beautiful. One group it doesn’t speak to, though, is thin women, some of whom claim Trainor must “hate” them. She’s diplomatically assured them that she knows “even you skinny girls struggle”, but the fact that some of them even took offence shows how delicate an issue body-image is.

It’s appeared, coincidentally, at a time when several other mainstream female pop stars are making a feature of their weight – specifically, by challenging the idea that the only desirable bottom is a Kylie-sized thimbleful. In many cases, excess flesh is the first casualty of record-label makeovers, but the current singles by Nicki Minaj and Jennifer Lopez – Anaconda and Booty, respectively – are forthright celebrations of ample junk in the trunk.

By extension, they draw attention to female stars’ weight, a subject usually illustrated with photos of bony clavicles and concave stomachs. In taking the opposing stance, Trainor, Minaj and J-Lo are still directing attention to their bodies – a factor that has been criticised readily - but they are rewriting the rules about acceptability.

The Anaconda cover photo, in particular, has become one of Minaj’s most talked-about images: it shows her squatting in a pink thong, inviting viewers to contemplate her proportions. Both she and J-Lo (and, of course, Beyoncé) have been instrumental in overturning the media-propagated notion that the only sexy butt is a small one. They revel in the positivity of Booty and Anaconda – in notable contrast to the Trainor song, which has the aura of a hard-won victory against self-doubt.

The three songs seem to signal a shift in mindset. Perhaps it’s inevitable: never before in pop history have female pop stars endured such scrutiny of their bodies, or such public disgust if they fail to be thin and gorgeous. (Tellingly, even Alison Moyet, who was a size 22 while fronting Yazoo in the 80s, recently dropped to a size 10, saying she was tired of the condescension of the “patronising thin”.) While there has always been a feminine ideal in pop, from Motown’s charm school onward, previous eras were more tolerant of women who didn’t fit the mould physically. But the last 15 years has seen the idea of female beauty constricted to the point where nine-stone Geri Halliwell used to be called fat.

There was a move toward restoring body confidence in 2001, when Destiny’s Child’s Bootylicious equated big backsides to jelly. This was actually supposed to be a good thing. The band were so persuasive about it that the idea stuck, and the line “I don’t think you ready for this jelly” became a national earworm (note too the subsequent craze in the US for bum implants). But it’s only recently, with the advent of body-positive artists like Minaj, Lady Gaga and now Trainor, that all sizes are being celebrated.