Remi Bader talks about her challenges with being a face of 'body positivity'. Image Source: Retail Bum- Medium
Remi Bader talks about her challenges with being a face of 'body positivity'
TikTok creator Remi Bader talks about her challenges with an eating disorder in a personal essay for The Cut.
Remi Bader, a content creator, and model wrote in her essay "I Never Asked to Be the Face of a Movement" that she began posting on TikTok in September 2020 after losing her job in the music industry and her father, who works in women's fashion, motivated her to join a small agency as a curve model. She was fine, but she experienced a lot of slow times and began to feel like she was going insane.
Remi went on to say that she started observing a lot of girls who did look like her but were bigger than her and doing fashion hauls, and she started to notice that they only showed the good stuff, like the clothes that fit and looked amazing in. But trying on clothes was never an activity she enjoyed. Remi noted that she began making "realistic clothing hauls," in which she decided to try on garments that were supposed to be her size and mocked how absurd they looked.
The hauls were the most popular, according to the content creator, but she would every once in a while mix in more personal videos in which she'd communicate about her anxiousness or her struggle with binge eating, which she began dealing with just before the pandemic. She went on to say that by January 2021, she would have thousands of followers and that when she called out these infamously thin-centric brands, they would reach out to her, gift her clothes, and some might even ask her to consult for them.
However, Remi also stated that as her supporter base grew, she began to receive haters. A lot of it was just random men or people saying she was fat and they didn't want to see her content, adding that she would encounter a lot of "fat bitches" and "fat whales", comments.
In the future, the body-positive model revealed that she started receiving backlash from the body-positive community since they were dissatisfied with the little progress she was trying to make, such as when she did work with Revolve to broaden their size chart up to 3X and then 4X, and that they would comment that why are these brands looking at her as the great plus-size creator? Another reason why some individuals in the plus-size community are opposing her is that she readily admits to being displeased with her body.
Remi Bader stated that she began all of social media content creation with no plan or expectation of success, and now she is supposed to be the image of body positivity, the face of the plus-size community, or whatever people want to call it. The creator stated she is too large to be classified as medium‐sized, but the plus-size community claims she is not large enough to have a say in things like size charts. Remi says she is consistently wondering, "Where do they want her to be, and what do they want her to say?" Because she can't come up with anything to say anymore.
All of this began to have an impact on Remi's mental health after about a year when she realized she was entering a darker phase and her binge eating was worsening. Remi stated that she was aware that she required assistance. She mentioned in her essay that she is supposed to promote self-love, but she is not going to act like she loves her body all the time, as she is predicted to do. The creator stated that she dislikes the term "body positive."
Remi checked into an eating-disorder care facility in the summer of 2022 and described that every day would begin with sessions of start therapeutic interventions, self-image, and nourishment, and then they'd have a meal together. Everyone would have different foods, according to the creator, as everyone had different eating disorders. Before every meal, the treatment center would make them go through the room and rate their hunger and stress levels, as well as discuss their meal options. They would take three deep breaths before eating, with her saying that eating together was the most beneficial part. Remi concluded that binge eating always gets worse when she is lonely.
Remi stated that she believes social media has done more positive than negative and that she has managed to regain a lot of her confidence. She returned to making realistic-haul videos after Paris Fashion Week last year and attempted not to read the comments. Remi stated that she is surrounded by numerous people who say she appears to help them, but they help her instead, adding that the unfortunate thing is that if a video goes viral and she gains followers, she is in a positive mood.
She finally stated that she intends to continue doing what she is doing, noting that brands have made changes, such as including larger girls on their websites or expanding their sizes. She admits to being frustrated by her weight, but she also refuses to try to lose weight because it is what did start her binge eating in the initial place. And Remi says she wants to improve, but it's difficult in the fashion industry and now she's thinking about her followers and what she'd do if she lost all this weight. Or what if she gained even more? It is about her, but it is also about everyone else.
The content creator was also named under Forbes 30 Under 30 last year and wrote that she would always like to say when speaking about her journey that this all happened by accident. But the more she thinks about it, she doesn't think there are any accidents. When a person knows deep down that they want something more in life and want to make a change, they WILL get themself there. Even in ways they least expect it.
