I’m not a “before” photo
On the left, a blurry photo of a shy, unexceptional woman. People are caught by surprise in random situations and unstudied, relaxed poses. Baggy, rumpled casual clothes. If they show some skin, the underwear does not fit well and is too small. No makeup, preferably smoothly combed hair and head lowered so that you have four chins instead of a neck. They stand up straight like a Greek kouros or sit freely like a Turkish pasha. It’s a photo from the deepest recesses of a phone’s memory or family albums, taken during a ceremony where it was impossible to escape posing. Unworthy of Instagram, undeserving of likes.
The photo next to it is a whole different story. You have to stand upright, be radiant and confident. Body slightly twisted – chest facing forward, hips sideways. One leg slightly bent, the other straight. Belly pulled in, don’t breathe! Chin up, back straight. Full make-up, hair styled at the salon. Tight, slimming leggings and a push-up bra. A decent photo – a good camera, bright light, and a nice background.
Such “before and after” sets of photos can bring fame, a prize in an Internet competition, an invitation to a morning TV show, thousands of shares, comments and likes. The more spectacular the metamorphosis, the greater the chance of success. For social media (and more), it is fuel. Just visit the profiles of the most popular fit influencers to see that this type of sets sent by female fans are on average every fifth published post. It is best to hold the selected celeb’s workout DVDs or a card with hashtags promoted by them in the photos. Internet users go crazy over it and consider it the ultimate proof that losing over 100 kg in a year is a piece of cake.
Transformations of stars
Metamorphoses fall on fertile ground at the beginning of the year, when the fit industry reaps the harvest of New Year’s resolutions. With a belly full of Christmas dishes, it is difficult to resist articles with flashy titles: “She lost 90 kg in a year! See her spectacular metamorphosis”. Yes, sometimes we can find a true story of a person who, under the supervision of specialists, completely changed their habits and worked hard for 12 months to fight not so much for the perfect appearance, but for the dream test results. This is how journalist Tomasz Sekielski presents his transformation. At the end of 2020 he boasted in the media that thanks to the bariatric surgery and his own persistence, he lost 90 kg. He documents his progress in great detail in order to present the full journey to health in a documentary.
Another example of a spectacular metamorphosis in Polish show business is the transformation of Mateusz “Big Boy” Borkowski, the protagonist of “Gogglebox. Przed telewizorem”. Borkowski, whom viewers of the first seasons of the TTV program watched as a 235-kilo man, lost 160 kg in three years thanks to a gastric reduction surgery and a diet. He is also not embarrassed to show in his social media the last remnant of his former figure, which other heroes of metamorphoses carefully hide, i.e. excess sagging skin.
Dominika Gwit-Dunaszewska showed impressive media metamorphoses from a different perspective. The actress gained fame thanks to the role of a dextrous and plumpy teen in the series “Przepis na życie” (Recipe for Life). This is why her fans were so surprised when she unexpectedly appeared on the red carpet in 2015 50 kg slimmer. On the wave of media admiration and interest in her new appearance, she wrote a guide on weight loss and her struggles with her body over the next year. In less than another year, gossip sites and fans began to notice that the star was slowly returning to her former figure. As she admitted, she could no longer stand hard training and the restrictive diet. After losing weight, she also did not feel feminine. She got the yo-yo effect, but as she assures, she doesn’t want to be thin any more, she wants to be happy.
The harmful effects of the fascination with spectacular metamorphoses of fat people are nothing new to the public. More than a decade ago, the first winner of a reality show about weight loss, “The Biggest Loser”, talked about the real backstage of his transformation. Ryan Benson lost over 55 kg in the programme, i.e. almost 40% of his body weight, for which he was awarded 250,000 dollars. As he later revealed in an interview for the New York Times, to achieve this effect, he fasted and dehydrated himself to the point of suffering from kidney problems and urinating with blood. And although similar information about the dangers to the health of programme participants has been reaching the media since 2004 and experts have alarmed that the show is driving fatphobia more than it is helping to fight obesity, it is still broadcast today. The fashion for metamorphoses has spread into tens of thousands of other shows around the world. Also on Polish channels, the participants’ make-up, hairdos and clothes were not enough. Stylists recommended them dietary supplements (sponsors of the programme) and shouted that if they failed to lose weight in a month, metamorphosis would not be successful.
The effect is all that matters
The backstage of spectacular media metamorphoses in Poland was recently described by, among others, the author of an anonymous post on the Instagram profile called Ciałopozytyw (Body-positive). She tells the story of how she went to a casting for a campaign organised by a dietary consulting company. Her main task was to lose a minimum of 10 kg in two months. “I was given some photocopied diet plan, supplements and a gym pass. Meetings with the dietitian were held once a week. Already during the first visit, I heard that I was losing weight too slowly”, she writes. She also mentions that the whole process was so stressful that, in order to meet the expectations of the campaign organisers, she decided to eat only half of the planned meals. It had the desired effect, and yet she kept hearing that “she could try harder”.
The culmination point was a professional photo shoot summing up the metamorphosis. The participant of the campaign was asked to bring a “before” photo from the time when she was pregnant, for the purpose of presenting the effects of the weight loss, and the photos after the weight loss were corrected by a retoucher. “I heard from the photographer that I had a good face for photos, it was just that the lower part was fucked up...”, she writes. During the photo shoot, she was also humiliated by stylists and hairdressers who joked about fat people. “Half a year ‘after’, I gained more than my starting weight, and I did not go to the hairdresser and beautician for two years. I know I met wrong people, but it traumatised me. Having been exposed to humiliation because of obesity my whole life, I trusted them and got hurt. It took me years to deal with this experience and build self-acceptance”, she adds.
Marta Kieniuk-Mędrala writes about her drastic diet and preparations for taking a photo after losing weight in the book “Rozmiar szczęścia nie daje. O zaburzeniach odżywiania i nie tylko” (Size does not make you happy. About eating disorders and more): “The mirror said ‘enough’, my husband and parents also started to suspect that it was not going in the right direction, but I thought otherwise and decided that I would do anything to make the weight indicator show less than 47 kilos. (...) I would always run on an empty stomach and there were moments (even my husband still does not know about it) that I felt very bad while running. (...) Finally, the time has come to send the photos of my metamorphosis to one of the most popular trainers in Poland. I postponed it for a long time, because I was waiting for the perfect moment, when my body would be perfect and I would be absolutely proud of it. She liked the metamorphosis so much that she placed it on her website and that’s when it all started! People were giving likes and sending me loads of messages with the same repeated question: ‘What have you eaten and how have you exercised to look like the cover girl?’”. Soon after, Kieniuk-Mędrala was diagnosed with anorexia, orthorexia and depression.
Today, an increasing number of body-positive Internet users go to war with the cult of metamorphoses. Comedy videos in which the main character appears “before slimming” and, in order to achieve a stunning metamorphosis, then presents a slim friend instead of herself are popular on TikTok.
There is also a number of articles that show how in five minutes you can effortlessly achieve the effect of a “spectacular metamorphosis” in “before and after” photos. Their authors write about the proper body positioning, dehydration, slimming clothes, but also photo editing. Even fashion bloggers join this choir and prove to their followers that a sitting position or slightly lowered trousers are enough to make the effect much less “Instagram-worthy”. Unfortunately, such initiatives on their part are usually one-time happenings, and most influencers do not have the courage to show themselves in less studied poses or label photos that are graphically corrected.
All this makes people who are in no way able to identify with ideal bodies of Instagram feel that they are closer to the omnipresent “before” photos. Body positive activists respond: “We are not ‘before’ photos!”, and publish “before and after” photo sets in which they look identical.
The body-positive blogger known on Instagram as @selfloveliv regularly publishes sets of her photos, but the direction of her metamorphosis is reversed. Today she weighs more than a few years ago. In her posts, she explains that although she has gained weight over the years, that doesn’t mean she has lost value or is less happy. “The photo on the left is me at a comic book convention, I was hiding my self harm scars, but bloody SWEATING, I didn’t eat the entire day (...), I was deep into my depression, convincing myself I was better off dead. Come to the photo on the right, and ya gal is THRIVING. I am on medication (...), I am in recovery from bulimia (...) and I’m the happiest I’ve been in ever. I still have my down days, but my god I am a changed person”, she writes.
Body positive activist Kaya Szulczewska also writes about the fatphobic overtone of “before and after” photos. “Comparing a slim figure with a fat one in the obvious context that the former has won, achieved success and is a measure of progress, results from prejudices against fat bodies and supports fatphobia”, she comments on Instagram. According to Szulczewska, the fashion for metamorphoses is driven by the dietary industry, for which the clients who always feel lost and guilty and who suffer from a yo-yo effect are “a real gold mine”. “I suggest that ‘before and after’ photos be ‘over the party’ photos from now on”, she adds, and illustrates the post with a plus size woman, who in the “before” photo looks almost identical to the “after” photo, but in the second one she sticks her tongue out to her haters.
Author: Katarzyna Seiler
Graphics: Marta Frej
The text was published in "Wysokie Obcasy” on 23 January 2021
