Millennials Fought Hard For This One Thing That Gen Z Thinks Has Gone Too Far, Says Survey

There’s this common belief that each generation gets a little more progressive and a little less traditional. For example, 2020 Pew Research Center data showed that 48% of Gen Z and 47% of millennials thought that legalizing marriage for members of the LGBTQ community was positive. Those statistics were different for older generations.

So, one would assume that Gen Z is super accepting, and certainly more so than millennials. In some regards, this may be true, but a recent survey found that there is one big issue that the two generations don’t see eye to eye on, and not in the way you might expect.

An overwhelming majority of Gen Zers think that body positivity has gone too far.

In the past decade or so, the havoc wreaked by the 1990s and 2000s popular beliefs about what a woman’s body should look like has been partially dismantled. The days of “heroin chic” were replaced with a body positivity movement that empowered women and showed them there is no one right body type.

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A lot of people would agree this was positive, but a survey from EduBirdie revealed that 78% of Gen Z actually believe the body positivity movement has gone too far. 27% even called it “overhyped” and “performative.”

Though it’s unfortunate, it’s not exactly surprising. These days, it seems like pretty much everyone has been on or knows someone who has been on medication like Ozempic for weight loss. Social media, where Gen Z lives, is cluttered not only with fitness influencers but with run-of-the-mill lifestyle influencers who never miss a workout in their “day in the life” videos. For a while, the pendulum was swinging. Now it’s going back in the opposite direction.

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Millennial women who were so deeply affected by diet culture hoped that Gen Z would be the generation to make change happen for good.

Journalist Michelle Konstantinovsky shared in a piece she wrote for Glamour that the very first magazine model she ever saw with a “stomach roll” was Lizzie Miller in Glamour’s very own September 2009 issue. Konstantinovsky asked Miller about how she felt about the culture she grew up in and the way things were changing.

“Growing up in the ‘90s and ‘00s messed with my body image,” she said. “Women and young girls felt like we needed to be perfect all the time — an impossible and daunting task. Thank goodness nowadays we have the space to be human and beautiful in all of our own perfectly imperfect ways. We fought for this. We deserve this.”

It seemed like the world was headed in the direction that Miller hoped it was for a while, with body acceptance and positivity growing. Unfortunately, Gen Zers are now rejecting the trend.

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Despite this change in attitudes, Gen Zers still admit to having insecurities.

Logically, you would think that if Gen Z is over body positivity, it’s because they feel like they don’t need it anymore. And yet, EduBirdie’s survey found that 44% of Gen Z have chosen not to wear certain outfits because of their insecurities about their appearance. 42% said it held them back from sharing photos on social media.

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So, why would a generation that still needs body positivity reject it? It’s probably because it’s what they’re constantly being fed on social media. Just like millennial women struggled with having to read about celebrities’ bodies being critiqued in every magazine, now Gen Z feels this same pressure online.

Becky Jones, a health and fitness coach who advocates for body positivity on social media, told Newsweek, “Even in the fitness space, there is immense pressure to conform to certain standards. That is why I am passionate about breaking the mold and showing that real, unfiltered bodies are enough.”

It would seem that the same cycle that had such a harsh impact on millennials is now repeating itself, targeting the new rising generation. Hopefully, this means that the body positivity movement will also cycle back through our culture as well.

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Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.