The Other Side of "Empowering" Music

Recently topping musical charts from iTunes to Billboard is Meghan Trainor's first single "All About that Base". The song aims to empower woman who feel badly about having larger sizes and to allow them to think of their body as beautiful. However there are quite a number of issues with Trainor’s message, which makes her miss the very point she was aiming for. In her attempt to encourage woman to love their bodies, she targets a specific body type and in turn attacks other body types. Therefore, instead of allowing woman to love their bodies it simply turns the ideal body into a different shape. It goes from the typically wanted skinny body, to the curvy body. This does not distract from the idea of being unhappy with your body but rather shifts it. In the music video, girls of similar body shape surround Trainor and they are all embracing this body type, a seemingly positive message. However, another woman with a thin body is portrayed and excluded. This makes woman of that body shape unhappy and therefore it is not empowering, but rather still a reflection of negativity. She also refers to men as a prime reason for loving your body, where she says that men prefer larger sizes. This makes the female think that she should love her larger body because a man will appreciate it, rather than it being beautiful no matter what. For the female with a smaller size, it will make her feel negative about her own body because it is not what the man will like. Going back to the idea of the embracing your larger body, the music video portrays woman who are slightly larger than the stereotypical, “size 2”, ideal body without reference to truly larger bodies. This exclusion, along with the attacking of the skinny girl, makes what should be an empowering song more specific and less positive. Further, the song encourages that a woman should love herself as a result of her beautiful body. It does not make any reference to intellect, achievements and interests. This focus on body shape, and especially since it is a particular one, is not any more empowering than body shaming. Overall, the music video is a fairly simple one that strays from empowerment. It does not depict the women in any sense of accomplishment or achievement that can empower them. Instead, it focuses on highlighting a body type and justifying loving it with the idea of masculine attention. Although the song and video set out with a great goal, it misses the mark more than anything.