When fashion influencer Natalie Craig recently searched Pinterest for skorts and cargo pants, she noticed something different from her past explorations on the service: Women who looked like her were sprinkled among the results—and without adding qualifiers like “plus size” to her query.
“I’m 5’2″ and a size 20, so I have to say, ‘short-size back-to-school outfit inspiration,’” Craig says of her usual challenge to find relevant fashion content online. “Now, I don’t have to take on that mental gymnastics.”
Craig’s freeing new Pinterest experience came from having early access to updated algorithms designed to surface diverse body types that the company is unveiling today, after quietly rolling them out in recent months. They are powered in part by a newly revealed AI system that can recognize different body shapes, forms, and sizes.
In a novel move among major tech platforms, Pinterest is trying to attack head-on the way algorithm-tuned social media services amplify the long-standing bias toward thin, light-skinned women as the ultimate standard for beauty. Academic research and even companies’ internal studies have shown this reinforcement has left some users struggling to reconcile their own bodies with what they generally see online, causing mental trauma or eating disorders.
Pinterest developed its technology by applying machine learning to over 5 billion images of people of all shapes and sizes. Annie Ta, head of Pinterest’s inclusive product team, says it is aimed at making users feel the service celebrates diverse body types and delivers content that feels more relevant. “Our mission is to help people feel inspired, and you can’t feel inspired unless you’re actually feeling like you were included in the product experience,” Ta says.
People seeking a more representative view of the human body online, like Craig, often develop specific search queries and other tricks to find relevant images, but say it remains frustrating. Tech platforms have largely ignored the problem. AI image generators such as Dall-E carry on unrealistic stereotypes found in their training data.
Other businesses that profit from the human form don’t serve every body either—the average woman in the US wears around a size 18 but most clothing brands go no larger. And research and lived experience show that prejudice against larger people is widely accepted in many facets of society including hiring, medical care, education, and algorithms. They are shamed, bullied, and unfairly labeled as unhealthy regardless of context. “There is a viciousness that is directed at fat people, and particularly fat people who refuse to apologize for being fat,” says Tigress Osborn, a self-described fat rights political activist who advised Pinterest on its new feature.
A review last year by the Berkeley Media Studies Group found that popular news outlets published over 18,000 articles on weight loss over 12 months, but just 48 articles about “anti-fatness.” People who are ultra-thin or squat also don’t have life easy. Advocacy by the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, a US nonprofit led by Osborn, to outlaw size discrimination is just gaining steam at statehouses and city councils, including a New York City ban that begins in November.
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