Why This Fat Fashion Star Is Tired of Body Positivity
“Excuse me, where are your plus sizes?”
If you’re a retail worker, this question might seem like a simple request — but for TikTok users, it’s usually a clue that Samyra Miller is about to take a brand to task. The 26-year-old content creator has built a TikTok empire by getting fat people everywhere to demand respect and equal treatment — and it starts with not accepting one measly rack of sequins and mumus usually hidden in the back of the store. Perhaps it’s summarized best in Miller’s viral Bounce-style song “Plus Sized Freestyle”: “If you want plus sizes to sell, why you keep making ‘em ugly as hell/Why do I gotta get it in the mail?” On TikTok, she takes her 2 million followers along with her as she tries — and often fails — to find clothes in her size from brands that claim to be “inclusive,” like Target, Aerie, American Eagle, Lululemon, True American, Skims, and Nike. Miller doesn’t stop at telling brands they make their plus-sized customers feel humiliated. She’s demanding that they do better.
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“We still are living in a time where you’ll have plus size teens and even middle and elementary schoolers go back to school shopping and they’re seeing language on their size jeans that says secretly slender or tummy control,” says Miller, in her trademark New Orleans drawl. “It is infuriating to me because it is what [continues] people’s insecurities with their bodies. If [these brands] really want to be these size-inclusive body-positive spaces, then they need to act as such.”
Having such outspoken opinions about fashion culture is much easier said than done. As long as Miller has been on the internet, even before she started posting about size inclusivity, she says her social media accounts have often been places where people leave vitriolic comments about her race or size. Take for instance, in 2023, when she posted a cover of “I’m Almost There,” the theme song for Disney’s New Orleans-based Black princess Tiana. “[My comments were filled] with ‘She’s too fat to be Tiana. She could never be Tiana.’ And that was just a sprinkle of what would continue to come,” Miller says. But while the reaction could have reasonably driven her offline, it made Miller more determined than ever to call people out for their hurtful words. And if it ends with them feeling ashamed? Well, it’s not her fault her comebacks are just better. “A lot of people will say, ‘All you do is talk about your body!’ No, you talk about my body, and then I talk back,” she tells Rolling Stone. “I really want to let people know that they don’t deserve for people to bully them, belittle them, talk about their bodies. You can talk back and sometimes your talking back is just being yourself and showing up even better every time.”
It’s taken less than four years for Miller to go from an excited New Orleans high school graduate to a TikTok star steadily climbing towards mononymous status. But Miller credits her rise and the personality so many people are fond of to her support system. “My parents cultivated me in a beautiful city where people are celebrated [for] being themselves,” she says. “New Orleans has such a beautiful spirit that I really feel like I carry with me everywhere.” As a teenager, Miller attended the Willow School, where she became the first girl to join the school’s football team as a defensive tackle. She then attended Harvard University, where she kept her extracurricular streak going, joining an a capella group. But after graduating in 2021, in the midst of a pandemic and few job prospects, Miller moved home and began posting more on TikTok. Looking back, it’s no surprise that some of her first viral videos were her shutting down racists in her comments accusing her of “stealing” her Harvard spot. Add in her strong, classically trained vocals, and people were sat. It’s this first refusal to be cowed online that is still strong and ever present in Miller’s responses — and why she’s deliberately focused on both being an example for other fat people and turning people’s ignorance into teaching moments.
“Most days I’ll ignore it and keep it pushing. But many times, people contradict themselves and when I find that there is a lesson in someone’s bullying, I will take it to prove my own point,” she says. “When they say ‘If you want clothes to fit you need to go to the gym’ I’ll take their comment and say ‘Okay what do you want me to wear there?’ I take those comments and flip them to make people think introspectively.”
While Miller’s videos cover everything from music and fashion to advocacy, the content that seems to get her the most attention is about size inclusivity in stores. Even though majority of clothes brands in the United States market extended sizes, these options are rarely available in stores and often in limited stock online. This means that many plus-sized people could spend hours shopping at the average mall or clothing center in the U.S and still not find something that works. She wants to change that. One of the biggest criticisms about Miller’s content is that she’s demanding that every single clothing store stock her size. But the creator pushes back against that assumption and says she specifically goes to stores that make large promises about being size-inclusive and then can’t back it. “I don’t give a shit about Brandy Melville,” she laughs. “They don’t give a rat’s ratatouille about me. I ain’t wasting my time. Those people don’t want me in their store. But the other brands that literally use the language, ‘We are inclusive’ and ‘We’re for all body types,’ I want them to start being held accountable for their promises. If this is what you value, then why isn’t that what’s reflected when I go into the store?
Miller isn’t only fighting haters. She also has to contend with pre-existing ideas about what fat people should profess online. Her biggest pet peeve: body positivity. The term, popularized online, started with the mentality that every body, regardless of size or looks, is something to be celebrated. But in the past 10 years, it’s gone from a healthy outlook for an Internet tired of the Instagram aesthetic to another marketing term. For Samyra, the movement isn’t a moment. It’s a useless buzzword — and one she’s sick of.
“I hate body positivity as it has been molded in today’s climate,” she says. “Current body-positive culture is just fatphobia repackaged as a more lighthearted thing. The people it centers are thinner people bending left and right, showing their rolls, showing all their bloat, and saying, ‘Oh my gosh, don’t worry. You’re not fat. I have rolls too.’ And that is not helpful. Fatphobia affects everyone, not just fat people. It also traps thinner people into certain methods and habits, it makes them feel like they need to stay a certain weight. We have a problem in America with the obsession with fitness and bodies in general. I think that our ultimate goal should be body neutrality.”
Asking for better treatment can be an isolating experience. Perhaps no one knows this better than Miller, who constantly sees her peers get paid to promote brands she’s called to task. It’s frustrating, but Miller says this is pushing her even harder to demand what fat creators are owed, clothing in their size, and the support of their smaller-sized peers. “There’s not much support in the pursuit of size inclusivity,” she says. “At the end of the day, your fave with 3 million followers that wears a size two, they’re still going to go work with that brand that’s not size inclusive. I really wish other people would stand up and see the issue. Because size exclusivity affects them too. It’s not just a fat person thing. It’s literally an everybody thing.”
Pushing for what plus-sized people deserve is hard work — and has become what people recognize Miller most for online. But she tells Rolling Stone that she refuses to be both dissuaded or categorized as a one-trick pony.
“I’m a classically trained singer. I’ve been performing my whole life. Music is a big part of me. I am also an academic. I love football, I love fashion,” she says. “I think that there is no world that exists where I would only be posting about just one thing. I’m limitless. You never know what you’re gonna get. I might wake up tomorrow and be like, ‘Y’all, I’m a tattoo artist. In four years, y’all might see me throwing shot put at the Olympics. Y’all don’t know. Tell me what I can’t do, and I’ll do it.”
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