Annotated Song 3: Meghan Trainor’s “All About that Bass” and Carmen Maria Machado’s “Eight Bites”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfTfPDghTgk

The song “All About That Bass” is sung by the singer Meghan Trainor. In the song, Meghan Trainor assails those people who take a slim figure for beauty and encourage be confident with yourself, should feel beautiful from the bottom of your heart. She uses herself as an example of not being slim, overthrows the standard of female beauty. That makes me think about Carmen Maria Machado’s “Eight Bites”. In the story, the protagonist imposes the aesthetic standards of her mother and sisters on herself, follows her mother’s idea of just eating eight bites of food and does the same surgery that her sisters had undergone to become slim (Machado). This shows the protagonist’s family all think being slim is beauty. But in the song, the lyrics of “Yeah, my momma she told me don’t worry about your size She says, boys they like a little more booty to hold at night” (Trainor) reveals different from the mom from “Eight Bites”, the mother described in the song tells her daughter not to worry about her figure, because a plump figure is popular.