Gabriella Lascano once took immense pride in being the face of the body positivity movement; however, things have changed quickly for her over the last three years.

With a tidal social media following of over 600k, she recently took to her TikTok handle to confess that she felt "guilty" for being part of the body positivity movement, claiming it had lost sight of “real health.”

In her conversation with the New York Times Opinion, she said the community welcomed her with open arms, "welcomes you with open arms and tells you there’s no pressure to look this way."

But over time, she realized things were getting out of hand. She highlighted that wearing heels, fitting into seats on rollercoasters and planes, and wearing some of her dresses had become a challenge.

When she weighed 400 pounds, she understood everything was wrong, “I started to wonder if loving myself at any size had become an excuse to ignore how big I was getting.”

“I felt like I saw myself being brainwashed, essentially. Meanwhile, the language around body positivity began sounding more extreme online.” Everything clicked for her when Jamie Lopez, another body-positivity movement member, died in December 2022.

After that shock, Lascano soon decided to change her lifestyle drastically, but her stance against the movement was not without backlash.

The Backlash Gabriella Lascano Received Was Brutal

Gabriella received a wave of online abuse, with some individuals claiming she was just venting her anger, while other critics piled on, accusing her of ‘internalized fatphobia’ and branding her a sellout.

The result? She quietly left, ““The body positivity community branded me a pariah, and so I left,” she said.

“We can still be body positive while acknowledging these risks. We can still love ourselves even if we want to lose weight,” she said. “That’s what real body positivity should stand for. Loving yourself at any size and having the freedom to change it.”

Her story is nothing new; many body-positivity followers have been calling out the movement as a facade for years. Sooner or later, people are starting to understand.

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Written by

Suryakant Das

Edited by

Oajaswini Prabhu