WORDS HATTIE PARISH
They’re meant to inspire us to try harder, be better: the before and after selfies revealing ‘fat to fit’ bodies, often the result of extreme diets and exercise plans. Indeed, the hashtag #transformationtuesday, a focus for such posts, has been added to more than 11 million selfies. But 2017 has seen a shift – for the healthier – with more women eating real food and ditching hardcore fitness routines to purposefully put on weight, and embracing sports that promote weight gain. Dubbed ‘reverse transformation’, when coach Arianna Dantone posted her own selfies on 1 January 2017, captioned ‘Gaining weight is cool’ she flipped the #newyearnewme cliché on its head. Twelve months and 85,000 posts later, #gainingweightiscool has become the newest iteration of the strong-not-skinny trend, with the added bonus of boosting many women’s wellbeing.