Body Image Pressures Persist Across Generations of Black Women

Around the World, Black Women Face the Same Beauty Challenges from Social Media  

Our bodies should be: thick, but not fat, sexy, but not sexual, strong, but not powerful. Are you tired, yet? Image credit: Peter Olude

When Daniella (last name withheld for privacy) was a teenager, her uncle told her she had gained weight and it “didn’t look good on her.” Years later, while she was in college, a family friend told her the opposite: she’d lost weight, and it “didn’t look good” on her. “I remember feeling very confused, comparing both experiences,” she says. “Which is it? Should I be fat? Thin?” 

Like many Black women, Daniella, now 31, spent years navigating body image whiplash. But she’s not alone, and not the only one still reckoning with what those contradictions meant. Across generations, Black women are shaped by different pressures, expectations and aesthetic ideals. And while Gen Z might seem more self-assured — fluent in self-care, softness, breaking generational trauma and body positivity — the question lingers: Is it real liberation, or just another performance? 

Black women are often required to perform beauty, and it’s layered: “We’re expected to be flawless, ageless, shapely but not too sexual, strong but never angry. It’s theatre, and it’s exhausting. 

Forty-seven-year-old Octavia (last name withheld for privacy), a doctor in Atlanta, had always been skinny but gained a lot of weight after having children. She felt judgment, especially in public. “Once at the airport, someone looked at me and said, ‘Oh, I see why,’ because my kids had been grabbing candy. That hurt.” Octavia eventually started working out and got back to a smaller size. “I noticed I was treated differently when I was bigger,” she says. “It felt like patients didn’t take me as seriously when I gave advice. Being overweight, especially in medicine, is seen as a character flaw,” she says. “Growing up, the ideal wasn’t skinny, but it wasn’t fat either. It was curvy,” says Sade (last name withheld for privacy), a 36-year-old clinical scientist based in the U.K., and raising a daughter of her own. She didn’t struggle with body dysmorphia, a mental health disorder where a person obsesses over their physical flaws (real or perceived). However, she did wish she had a curvier figure.  

“I was never directly told to lose or gain weight, but I was often told to be grateful that I had a brain, that I was smart.” She contrasts her own upbringing with today’s algorithm-fed ideals. “While there was pressure to ‘look good’ in certain outfits, we didn’t have TikTok or Instagram comparing us to women across the world,” she says. “But now? One scroll through hashtags like #SkinnyTok is enough to spark body dysmorphia.” 

Across these stories, it’s clear the aesthetic script keeps shifting, but the pressure never lifts. Black women are told to be full but not fat, slim but not skinny, womanly but not excessive. To take up space, but only the kind that flatters. Beauty becomes a tightrope and falling off either side comes with shame. The space in between is narrow, and often, impossible. 

New Platforms, Old Pressures  Dr. Clare Anyiam Osigwe, a wellness educator, believes the aesthetics of beauty may have changed, but their emotional demands have not. “Even in wellness spaces, there’s pressure to appear effortlessly glowing when many of us are simply surviving.” Black women are often required to perform beauty, and it’s layered: “We’re expected to be flawless, ageless, shapely but not too sexual, strong but never angry. It’s theatre, and it’s exhausting. 

She remembers how, after childbirth, her body had completed a miraculous feat, but others focused instead on how soon she ought to “snap back.” 

Dr. Osigwe believes social media visibility has created an illusion of progress. “You may see more body types now, but that doesn’t mean they’re embraced offline. It just means they’re monetized.” 

To combat this, Dr. Osigwe advocates for body neutrality over body positivity. “I don’t always love my body. But it doesn’t mean I’m any less valid. I want the freedom to just be, without having to frame everything as empowerment.” 

This curated performance of body confidence, Dr. Osigwe argues, is part of a wider system that commodifies everything, even liberation. Her concern echoes the views of Olabanke Goriola, a scholar of Performance Studies at Northwestern University. It’s tempting, Goriola says, to believe younger Black women are more liberated today, that we’ve somehow transcended the body image pressures our mothers or aunties faced. “We see many Black women celebrating their bodies publicly,” she says. “And this could give the illusion of acceptance and liberation.” But younger Black women still navigate a culture that dictates what the ideal body should look like, she says. “We see how this influences the rate at which many engage in surgical enhancing procedures.” Not to mention Ozempic. “Those who cannot afford it, curate a well-edited body using filters.” 

Visibility, she argues, is not the same as freedom. Especially not in a digital age where social media acts more like a stage than a mirror. “It’s a well-curated space where people can disguise themselves and not show their authentic selves.” 

According to Goriola, much of what looks like confidence online is simply a new shape of conformity. The pressure to fit in hasn’t disappeared — it’s just found a new language. “The need to conform has disappeared behind the guise of wellness, soft life aesthetics and a well-curated digital lifestyle,” she says. 

Take the soft life movement, a popular aesthetic that promises luxury, rest, and ease for Black women Goriola agrees with its premise on paper. “Yes, we need to reject grind culture and the idea that Black women do not deserve rest,” she says.  

Yet in practice, the movement has morphed into another ideal, one that’s increasingly difficult to attain. “Online, soft life often looks like a body: slim-thick, glowing-skinned, clad in designer loungewear or cute gym sets, eating clean in pristine kitchens. Which, Goriola notes, “we all know is not the typical everyday life of an average Black woman.” 

That visual shorthand has consequences. “I’m not saying a Black woman does not deserve all the best things in life,” she clarifies. “But the way it’s played by these women who practice this soft life aesthetic, there’s the tendency to pass a message that you only deserve softness and rest if you’re attractive and thin enough, or if your physicalness aligns with the trending beauty standards.” 

To her, that’s not freedom. “It’s just another performance of conformity.” True liberation, she insists, while not entirely attainable because “capitalism profits off women’s insecurities, and patriarchy dictates the rules of desirability,” can be achieved in small radical acts. “It would mean living and showing up fully in one’s body, without alteration, without performance.”  

Reclaiming the Body, Gently  Still in the midst of all this scrutiny, some women have begun to push back, to define beauty on their own terms, despite the demands, constraints and tensions and never-ending expectations – past and present, online and offline. 

Even Daniella, once confused by contradicting expectations, says she’s finally making peace. “I’ve learned to treat my body with patience and care. The older I grow, the more in awe I am of my body and the things it does for me.”  

“Loving yourself isn’t a destination, it’s a daily negotiation,” Dr Osigwe says. “Remember that your body is not a battleground. And remember that you only owe yourself your truth.”