Something is shifting in the way women talk about their bodies — and it’s moving faster than anyone expected. It’s in Hilary Duff buying a full-page ad in the New York Times to declare “Stronger Not Smaller.” It’s in Fitness with Spotify — a platform with half a billion users — announcing that movement belongs in the same conversation as music, art, and audiobooks, and choosing a strength-training advocate to headline the moment.
This is a cultural correction, and surprisingly enough, the entertainment industry is driving it.
Over the past year, cultural critics from all corners of the internet have called attention to the seemingly regressive return of “thin is in” throughout Hollywood culture, widely contributed to by the rise in popularity of Ozempic and similar weight loss medications. Prominent feminist Tik Tok creator Paris Mwendwa has called attention to this issue, claiming that “body positivity has lost the plot”. Even Gwyneth Paltrow, long known for her highly restrictive eating habits, has shared she has since stopped restricting to the extreme and has opened up to “breads, carbs” and food she previously avoided.
What makes this moment different from every previous attempt to mainstream women’s strength training is who is carrying the message. Not fitness personalities or wellness influencers with a supplement code. Entertainers. Cultural figures with massive platforms, complicated histories with their own bodies, and no financial need to say anything that doesn’t align with what they actually believe. The credibility isn’t manufactured, it’s built-in.
Hilary Duff is the clearest example. She first spoke publicly about battling a “horrifying” eating disorder at 17 in a Women’s Health Australia interview — describing how the pressure of being on camera made her feel that “actresses are skinny” was a rule she had to follow. Earlier this year, she returned to the subject on Jay Shetty’s On Purpose podcast, going deeper on what it was like to have people commenting on her body at a young age and comparing her to thinner peers in her industry.
That backstory is what makes the “Stronger Not Smaller” campaign something other than a brand deal. The campaign with fitness app Ladder came with a full-page New York Times advertisement — not a fitness magazine, not a wellness blog, the New York Times — as a direct counter to the diet culture and “SkinnyTok” trends that have been pushing women backward in recent years. It landed alongside Duff being named one of four cover stars for the 2026 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue, with Ladder’s CEO noting explicitly that “for so long, the conversation around women’s fitness was centered on being smaller, rather than feeling strong, capable and empowered.”
Fitness With Spotify Brings The Joy Back
Spotify read the same room. The platform’s expansion into fitness was framed not as a product announcement but as a positioning statement: movement belongs alongside music, audiobooks, and art as one of the things that brings people joy rather than anxiety. A deliberate counter to doomscrolling culture. At the launch, the trainer they put front and center was Rebecca Kennedy — longtime Peloton instructor, one of the most prominent voices in the industry, and someone who has spent years making a specific argument about women’s strength.
Rebecca Kennedy has been saying this longer than it’s been fashionable. “Trying to make yourself smaller to fit into a societal case is the least important or fascinating thing about you,” she told me in an exclusive quote at the Fitness with Spotify launch — a line that landed with the quiet certainty of someone who has watched women talk themselves out of the weight room for years.
She describes strength training as the thing that gives women permission to stop performing smallness and start experiencing what their bodies are actually capable of: “We are badass and we are capable — and strength training can remind you of that on a regular basis.”
At the Fitness with Spotify launch, Kennedy put the celebrity dimension of this movement in direct terms. “Seeing people like my colleagues and celebrities that are actually including strength training in their workouts are moving the needle,” she said. “They are shifting the conversation, and I’m so grateful that they’re doing that. Because I remember growing up, I was in the gym, and there were no women in there. I was alone by myself and it felt so out of place. It’s not until 2026 that we’re really starting to see women take full advantage of this.”
Megan Thee Stallion Empowers Her ‘Hotties’
Planet Fitness and Megan Thee Stallion were making the same argument, differently packaged. The creative team behind the “Big Fitness Energy For All” campaign described throwing out the “shame playbook” entirely — building around joy, strength, and confidence rather than weight loss or transformation. As “Mother Fitness,” Megan appeared as a superhero saving her audience from toxic instructors, shady scammers, and fitspo fakes. Megan had been talking about body image and mental health long before the deal. Planet Fitness didn’t build her credibility. They borrowed it, and spent accordingly.
Tennis’ Most Acclaimed Athlete Enters The Conversation
Serena Williams brought the argument to its most credible possible source. Tonal’s “Strength Made Me” campaign built around her as its anchor. It was Williams describing her own decades-long complicated relationship with her strength: “In the beginning of my career, I didn’t embrace strength — I had it, I looked it, I felt it, but I didn’t embrace it. Once I did, I realized that there is something so beautiful about being strong.” The most decorated female athlete in American sports history spent years having her physicality treated as something to be explained or managed rather than celebrated. Her saying that publicly, attached to a strength training brand, is a specific kind of cultural event.
Peloton Stays Ahead Of The Game
Peloton has long been known for their early adoption of a progressive lens on fitness. It’s no surprise that the platform, which focuses on diverse approaches to fitness and wellness, would be an early adopter of this empowering trend as well. Popular instructor Camila Ramón has “strong not small” in her Instagram bio — not a campaign, not a paid placement, just a statement about what she stands for baked permanently into her public identity. Robin Arzón has been less understated: “Without context, tone and sculpt are rooted in diet culture. I think we’re inheriting a lot of nonsense that makes women feel like they have to shrink in order to expand. Let’s lift heavy shit and take up space. That’s the expansion.”
The through line is this: for the first time, the entertainment industry’s most powerful women are not just modeling a different relationship with their bodies. They are building the infrastructure — the campaigns, the brand deals, the platform partnerships, the founding roles — to make that relationship the default. Not a trend to cycle through. A rewrite of the baseline.
For decades, the industry’s message to women about their bodies was built on subtraction. The shrink-down. The before-and-after. The disappearing act dressed up as aspiration. What’s notable about this moment is not just that the message has changed — it’s that the women changing it are the same ones the old message was designed for. Hilary Duff, the Disney Channel star told she needed to disappear. Serena Williams, the greatest athlete of her generation told her strength needed explaining. Megan Thee Stallion, who made wellness and self-worth central to her public identity before anyone offered her a deal for it. The campaign invent find them. They were already there. The industry just finally caught up.
