'All About That Bass' a catchy step in healthier direction

When the DJ at Drinker's Tavern in Old City played the megahit "All About That Bass" Saturday night, the crowd went wild.

"It's the best song to dance to," said Rachel Rachubinski, who, along with her friend Celia Criniti fell under the song's spell, possessed by the beat, propelled by the melody.

It just so happens Rachubinski and Criniti also appreciated the lyrics, which promote a positive body image.

With so many women struggling to lose weight and conform to unrealistic standards of beauty, it is a relief to hear a pop star offer a different perspective, said Rachubinski, a 23-year-old hairstylist from South Philadelphia.

"If you do notice the words, I think it can help."

The song, an international chart-buster that went platinum this month, has been called an empowerment anthem. Cowritten and performed by 20-year-old singer-songwriter Meghan Trainor, it is one of a half-dozen current hits telling women they are all beautiful in their own way.

Trainor's refrain, "I'm all about that bass, no treble," is open to interpretation, said Criniti, 23, a medical assistant.

But other lines - "My momma, she told me don't worry about your size," and "I won't be no stick-figure, silicone Barbie doll" - could not be clearer.

For months, the question of how much a peppermint-candy pop song can help women make peace with their bodies has provided grist for bloggers, daytime television hosts, feminists, and eating-disorder experts.

Trainor has been charged with inauthenticity. Critics have complained that, as a white girl from Nantucket, Mass., she has no right to a "ghetto" accent, and that although the song says Trainor "ain't no size two," neither is she large enough to speak for the full-figured.

Thin women have complained Trainor is "skinny-bashing," and feminists have objected to her implication that men still decide what is beautiful.

Whatever.

"All About That Bass" is riding a tidal wave of popularity. Over the weekend, the music video topped 100 million views on YouTube, up from 50 million in mid-September.

On Sept. 11, the day the song went platinum, Trainor appeared on the Ellen DeGeneres Show. It was after watching an episode in the spring in which DeGeneres illustrated the absurdity of Photoshopped models that Trainor was inspired to write the song.

"Have you struggled with self-acceptance?" DeGeneres asked.

"Yeah," Trainor said. "All my life."

That feeling alone qualifies Trainor to deliver the message, said Margot Maine, an eating-disorder specialist and author of The Body Myth. For, no matter what size Trainor may be, Maine said, like most women, she is subject to the pervasive social pressure to be thin.

"The real issue for us to focus on is the importance of embracing body diversity," Maine said.

Too often, young people are taught to judge others, and themselves, as lazy or undisciplined for being fat, she said, when they ought to learn self-acceptance. "No matter your shape, or your nose, or how tall, whatever you are, you are OK. You are entitled to take up as much space on this earth as anyone else."

Most girls, she said, never hear that message.

Trainor's hit is as much a sign that cultural attitudes are changing as a catalyst for that change, in a small but ongoing way, said Barbie Zelizer, professor of communication at the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

"Every piece of popular culture," she said, "is wrestling with changing notions about what matters, what's right and what's wrong."

Those changes occur incrementally, she said. In 2002, Jamie Lee Curtis posed unglammed for an article, "True Thighs," in More magazine. Two years later, Dove skin care launched its "real beauty" campaign.

Momentum may be picking up. "All About That Bass" is one of several current songs attacking the skinny-girl ideal or encouraging women to ease up on themselves.

Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda" is an ode to the big butt. In "Try," Colbie Caillat sings, "Why should you care what they think of you? When you're all alone, by yourself, do you like you?" And in "Because I am a Queen," India Arie declares, "My momma told me a lady ain't what she wears, but what she knows."

The artists' music videos, showing women removing their makeup, baring mastectomy scars, and admiring their wrinkled faces in the mirror, are like rocks carried by cultural currents, gradually changing the river's course.

"I don't know if it's because I'm older, but I'm more accepting of my body, even though I weigh more than I used to," Rachubinski said, finishing a salad in Liberty Place last week.

Nodding, Criniti said, "I think it is more acceptable to be thicker than a decade ago, when everyone was stick-skinny."

The power of popular culture to affect complex social issues is significant, said Michael P. Levine, an emeritus professor of psychology at Kenyon College who studies eating-disorder prevention.

The barrage of images and ads associating thinness with beauty creates a hostile climate for those susceptible to eating disorders, Levine said.

And though records of eating disorders date back centuries, he said, between 1960 and 2000, there was a marked upsurge to the point where today, anorexia nervosa, bulimia, and binge eating afflict at least 24 million Americans.

"There was no successful civil rights movement without mass media. No successful assault on the tobacco industry without mass media," Levine said. "So it is not only part of the problem, but a critical part of the solution."

Rallying to Trainor's cause, fans have created spin-off videos, including one produced by the Bombshell Bridal Boutique, a Michigan salon for plus-size women.

If the public is willing, in theory, to believe Trainor when she says, "Every inch of you is perfect from the bottom to the top," , her quest to "bring booty back" is easier than destigmatizing double chins and cankles.

"Negative attitudes about obesity include a lot of myths," Maine said, including the assumption that fat people merely lack discipline.

"Sometimes people can't be in complete control of what they look like . . .. And body mass index is not that great an indicator of a person's health. The focus should be on the quality of diet and exercise."

It was not the love-yourself message alone that rocketed "All About That Bass," to the top. After all, last year's No. 1 hit "Blurred Lines" - hardly a paean to women's empowerment - has become a standard played by DJs at weddings. Which can be seen as evidence that sisterhood really is not all that powerful; that some songs are irresistible despite their lyrics; or both, or neither.

"At some level, we want popular culture to do more than it can," Zelizer said. "We want it to be creating clear moral, ethical, and political standards."

What it can do "is help us make sense of life in some ways."

In a social climate that remains fairly harsh on women, Trainor's song might be just a raindrop in a brief sunshower.

Still, it is a sparkly one.

On Wednesday, Billboard reported that "All About That Bass" once again led the Top 100 list of hit singles, holding steady for a third consecutive week.

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