There’s a glow-up happening across timelines, soundtracked by gentle affirmations, slow mornings, and silky robe selfies: the “soft life” movement. This aesthetic—and more importantly, lifestyle—champions ease, rest, beauty, and pleasure over burnout, hustle, and survival mode. And while Black and Brown women have long been denied softness in both cultural imagery and lived experience, this wave of hyper-femininity and rest-first living is being reclaimed.
Still, there’s a notable gap: the consistent exclusion of plus size women from the visual and narrative center of this trend.
“Soft life” didn’t come out of nowhere. It’s rooted in the ongoing rebellion against the “strong Black woman” trope, which often reduces Black and Brown women to their utility—how much they can endure, how hard they can work, and how much they can produce. While strength is beautiful, it has also been used to rob women, especially plus size women, of their right to vulnerability, delicacy, and care. Fatphobia compounds this erasure.
Society often associates softness with daintiness, fragility, and thinness—categories that plus size women are rarely allowed to occupy without critique and concern when they are living a life of softness. The visuals of seeing plus size and curvy women walking in abundance and a soft life are many times triggering to those who aren’t used to seeing them. There are often times a harsh response to those women.
A Soft Life in Practice
As a curvy, dark-skinned woman, my life has often been questioned by both men and women, who aren’t used to seeing someone like me embrace a life of soft leisure. I work, of course. But over the past decade, I’ve built a remote career through social media and freelance writing that’s allowed me to live wherever I choose. It’s the life I dreamed of—and claimed for myself—since I was 16.
That intentional choice has significantly reduced the stress in my life. It’s given me the flexibility to create abundance, experience softness, and build the career of my dreams—still evolving, even at 37. Through this path, I’ve come to see how the constant expectation of strength placed on women like me often fuels a cycle of emotional hardness, bitterness, and burnout. We’re expected to carry it all without complaint, to inherit exhaustion as if it’s our birthright. I’ve chosen to break that cycle.
We see it clearly in media and brand campaigns. Luxury skin care brands push “minimal effort” beauty, but usually only on slimmer and petite bodies. Digital influencers promote “soft girl aesthetics,” lounging in neutral-toned apartments and cashmere sets, yet plus size creators rarely appear in these roundups or at the top of our TikTok feeds when we search the “soft life” content.
This imbalance implies that softness must be earned through thinness and overt daintiness, or that luxury isn’t for bodies deemed excessive or too visible. The truth? Softness is not a size, and plus size women, particularly Black and brown women, are redefining what this lifestyle can look like.
On TikTok, creators like Kaayamari and SimplySayo highlight Black women embracing their right to slow down, to rest, and to choose beauty and ease—without apology. Under hashtags like #SoftLife, #BlackGirlLuxury, and #PlusSizeBlackWomen, content emerges that merges hyper-femininity with resistance—where rest, skincare, and softness are acts of both rebellion and healing. These creators are actively challenging cultural scripts that demand they always be strong, always be working, always be proving. Still, the truth remains: plus size women are not leading this content, nor are they consistently included in the broader conversations about soft living.
There’s also inspiration from scripted television that reflects—and in some cases, leads—this cultural shift. In Netflix’s Survival of the Thickest, Michelle Buteau plays Mavis Beaumont, a plus size Black stylist rebuilding her life with self-respect and style. The show is not about weight loss or shame; it’s about thriving in the body she has. Similarly, Shrill, starring Aidy Bryant, centers a plus size woman navigating self-worth, sexuality, and softness on her terms. These women wear bold colors, cry when they need to, and indulge in joy—all markers of softness.
In earlier representations, films like Real Women Have Curves (2002) gave us glimpses of this nuance, showing the tension between body image and self-determination in Latina culture. Drop Dead Diva (2009) may have been quirky in premise, but it boldly questioned society’s obsession with beauty and size by placing a plus size woman at the center of a traditionally “glam” narrative—luxury, law, and love.
Yet, these representations still feel rare. When we think about famous portrayals of “soft lives” on screen—think Sex and the City, Gossip Girl, or even Bridgerton—plus size women are largely absent. The aesthetic of softness is portrayed through thin bodies draped in silks and adorned in curated routines. But imagine if softness was allowed to look like Danielle Brooks at the Met Gala, or if “resting rich face” was redefined by a darker-skinned, size-18 woman on a magazine cover.
Softness isn’t about passivity or weakness—it’s about permission. The permission to choose yourself, to be held, and not just to hold. For plus size women, embracing the soft life is a radical declaration that says: “I don’t need to shrink to be worthy of care.” It’s choosing silk over survival, healing over hustle.
As the beauty and lifestyle industries continue to ride the soft life wave, they must expand their visual vocabulary and become inclusive of how women living a soft life can and do look. A true soft life doesn’t exclude women with curves, cellulite, or a size beyond 14. It includes them in the marketing, the campaigns, and the storytelling—not as a diversity add-on, but as the main character.
Because softness is not a privilege for the thin and light-skinned. It’s a human right. Plus size women of all races and backgrounds deserve to live it, luxuriously.
This article, The Rise of ‘Soft Life’ Beauty — And Why Plus Size Women of Color Deserve It Too first appeared on The Curvy Fashionista and is written by Melanie Yvette.
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