Barbie Ferreira doesn’t want to be your body-posi hero: ‘I never said that’

Barbie Ferreira plays the confident, sexy Kat Hernandez on Euphoria – but in reality, she doesn’t want to be known as your comfort character.

In the second episode of season two, Kat finds herself in the middle of a hazy dream sequence where conventionally beautiful Instagram models overwhelm her; telling her to “love herself” and “smash the beauty standards.” The scene was meant to be reflective of “toxic positivity” culture, in which we backhandedly praise people who don’t fit into the box of skinny, white and cis.

The yass-kweenification of fat people *simply existing* is just as nauseating outside the show, and Barbie opened up about this in an interview for Who What Wear.

Photo via HBO

Barbie reckons we’ve started to move on from the cringier side of self-love – just “not in the right ways.

“I think bigger bodies are not as ‘trendy’ as they used to be,” she said. “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.”

It’s well known that people often project a version of themselves onto the celebs they see every day – which is why Adele received backlash from fans when she started losing weight. So when Barbie first appeared on social media as a plus-sized person who loved wearing lingerie, people decided to call her a body-positive icon.

Photo via Instagram

“It’s so funny that people just assume [that I love myself]. What – did I say that? I never said that. You guys just say that. You posted that on me,” she said.

Barbie insisted people shouldn’t get confused between actual body-positive activists and… well, plus-sized people wearing lingerie because they want to. “It’s not radical for me to be wearing a crop top,” she said. “[Comments like those] are just backhanded compliments.”

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