Reality TV star and fashion designer Lauren Conrad made a surprise announcement on her highly popular website yesterday: she and her staff of fashion, health, and lifestyle bloggers would no longer be using body-shaming terminology.
Under the new guidelines, words like “thin,” “slim,” and “skinny” will be replaced by words like “fit,” “toned,” and “healthy.”
Though the rule is new, Conrad said it had been coming for a long time, as the site has always been focused on body positivity:
Starting this month, we’ll be banning any body shaming terms from the site, and replacing them with words like “fit” “toned,” and “healthy.” We try do to this for the most part anyway, but now we’re making it official! The word skinny will now be reserved for skinny jeans. My editorial team and I had a long talk about it, and we want to make sure that the focus is on being fit as opposed to a number on the scale. Every body is created differently—and healthy bodies come in all shapes and sizes.
For the most part, Conrad’s community embraced the change, with comments on her blog post and the Internet at large staying generally positive. On her Facebook crosspost, criticism was more plentiful, with numerous commenters claiming that banning descriptions of certain body types would only serve to shame people with those body types instead of making people with other body types more uncomfortable.
But most readers seemed to understand and accept that the goal of the website is to promote the idea, as blog commenter olayak put it, that “anyone can be fit, toned or healthy, regardless of weight.”
Many readers and media outlets noted, however, that Conrad’s various clothing lines haven’t fully embraced body positivity to the level of adding plus sizes.
I love that @LaurenConrad is battling body shaming, now if her clothing sizes would go up to a size 24 that would even be sweeter
— Claridad (@Claridad4me) June 1, 2015
Still, Conrad’s website has showcased plus-sized models in the past and seems committed to promoting an overall healthy lifestyle for all body types.
Perhaps the positive response she has received from this change will push her to make more concrete ones in the future.
Photo via Lauren Conrad/Facebook
