Meghan Trainor is a singer and songwriter who makes it a point that her image not be modified using software such as Photoshop to make her body look thinner. She aspires to be different from other performers and to be a role model for young women to let them know that talent comes in all shapes and sizes. Trainor is a Grammy Award–winning artist who has performed very popular singles such as “All About That Bass” and “Lips Are Moving.” Her music encourages women to embrace their curves and shape.

In May of 2015, Trainor became upset when she noticed that the video of her latest single, “Me Too,” showed an altered image of her, with a smaller waist than her actual waist size. She demanded that the video producers take the video down and put the unaltered video back online. Trainor says, “I took down the Me Too video because they Photoshopped the crap out of me and I am so sick of it . . . So I took it down until they fix it” (CBSN, 2016; Quinn, 2016). The video producers did as she requested, and the original, unaltered video was then released.

Discussion Questions:

1. Why would the video producers have Photoshopped Meghan Trainor’s waist to make it look smaller? What does that say about the culture that is consuming the video?

2. What do you think people can learn from Trainor’s confrontation and demand that her original video and body appearance be restored?
3. In what ways might Trainor’s confrontation and the restoration of the original video online be beneficial for both women and men?