Barbie Ferreira — model, iconic Tumblr girl, actress and owner of my fave celeb IG account — has spoken out about receiving “backhanded compliments” regarding her appearance.
During an interview with Who What Wear, Ferreira discussed a particularly powerful scene for her character Kat in season two of Euphoria.
In the scene, Kat is surrounded by stereotypically beautiful influencers who yell at her to “love herself”. In my opinion, it’s easily one of the most pointed and effective scenes of Euphoria all season.
Loving yourself in spite of society’s beauty standards and fatphobia is possible, but it’s also incredibly difficult. Influencer culture, advertising and the fashion, makeup and skincare industries all continue to promote an extraordinarily narrow idea of beauty and attractiveness.
Add in an online culture of toxic positivity and you’ve got a perfect storm of both unattainable beauty standards and a relentless pressure to love yourself all the time.
And, while we’ve made some (key word being “some”) progress when it comes to embracing body diversity, it’s been pretty fkn minimal.
Discussing the scene, Barbie Ferreira reflected on self-love and self-acceptance.
“I think bigger bodies are not as ‘trendy’ as they used to be, which is really sad to me,” she explained.
“But it’s more of a conversation of the fact that we all struggle with self-love, and I don’t think any young person has really figured it out yet.”
View this post on Instagram
Ferreria also highlighted the pressure of peoples’ assumptions that she is “this person who “loves themselves”.”
“It’s so funny that people just assume that. What—did I say that? I never said that. You guys just say that. You posted that on me,” she explained.
In the interview, Ferreira called out the cooked comments she receives about her perceived “confidence” simply for existing as a plus-size person online.
Ferreira described them as “backhanded compliments”.
“It’s not radical for me to be wearing a crop top. I’ve been doing this since I was 16. I’m 25,” she explained.
Ferreira did say that the experience of playing Kat had been cathartic.
“I feel like I had a lot of things come up emotionally because of the pandemic, and putting some of that into this season was therapeutic for me,” she said.
I hope other people [watching] can also feel the same way and release the pressure of being perfect and happy all the time. Because that just doesn’t exist.”
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Commenting on people’s bodies? Literally the most unnecessary thing of all time.
