They had Madonna and Gwyneth, Alba and Lopez, but last week we lost Beyoncé to the celebrity slimming trend and we’re not sure we like it, writes Emma Gunavardhana
Glossip Girl is feeling rather conflicted this week… As I ruminate on the subject of Beyoncé’s Grammy appearance and the obvious changes in her body I stumble between the utmost respect for the transformations she’s made post-baby, and the selfish disappointment that another celebrity fitness trainer has turned an already fit and healthy woman into an Olympic-level athlete.
On the latter let me elaborate. Beyoncé is an incredibly slim woman; I’ve seen her up close and she’s unbelievably toned. Her body type, though, is curvaceous – slender and toned, but all woman. But the girl who didn’t think we were ‘ready for her jelly’ served up a plate of lean cuisine when she debuted her thigh gap last week.
Beyoncé has shared the reason for her motivation in a YouTube video (Part 4: Liberation - see below), citing her desire to get back into shape after having her daughter, Blue Ivy in 2012, and that is admirable. But this isn’t back to pre-baby weight; Beyoncé is slimmer than she has ever been before (weighing 130 lbs, she reveals in the video) and this is thanks to the work of fitness trainer and former dancer Nicole Winhoffer. Her technique is to work muscles in a 360 degree, rather than a linear, motion. She also works with Madonna, taking over where Tracy Anderson left off.
Beyoncé can do what she wants with her body; obviously, it’s more that while Gwyneth, Jessica Alba and Madonna have become a lifestyle in and of themselves, somehow Beyoncé seemed as though she was one of us. In her show at the O2 in 2013 as part of the Mrs Carter tour she sang ‘I’m a host of imperfection’ during the song Flaws and All while gesturing to her imagined bingo wing. Who can’t relate to that?
After a 22-day vegan diet and more training with Nicole she has made significant changes to her physique. These kind of physical alterations don’t come about with half-hearted resolve, Beyoncé will have had to dig deep to get where she is. Where Glossip Girl feels a little sad is that it might be the case that Beyoncé is more ‘one of them’ now, and less ‘one of us’. But if she’s a little drunk in love with her new physique, Glossip Girl can’t deny her, because she has definitely earned the right.