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Kayla Itsines Regrets Perpetuating the Term ‘Bikini Body’

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Kayla Itsines has taken over Instagram with her supereffective workout plan, which promises to give drastic results. With more than 5 million followers, the Australian fitness expert frequently promotes her exercise routine, known as The Bikini Body Guide (or simply #BBG), on her social media accounts. However, despite its wild success, Itsines says she has some regrets.

The workout guru recently admitted that using the term “bikini body” implies there’s only one type of body that works for a bikini, according to Bloomberg. “Do I regret calling my guides Bikini Body? My answer is yes,” she said. “That’s why when I released the app, I called it Sweat With Kayla. Sweat is so empowering. I love that.”

While the term “bikini body” had been utilized for a long time even before Itsines’s insane success as a social media phenomenon, it truly became more widely used with the launch of her workout plan. Even her Bikini Body Guide hashtag has accumulated almost 4 million posts, proving just how immensely Itsines’s use of the term has affected its overall popularity.

While publicly renouncing her use of the term “bikini body” to describe her workout plan might not seem like a huge deal, it actually could have a pretty large impact on her impressionable devotees. A recent study from the marketing firm Collective Bias found that almost one-third of consumers are more likely to purchase a product by a non-celebrity blogger, like Itsines, than a celebrity. This just shows how deeply consumers trust these kinds of influencers; consumers consider these Internet personalities peers rather than celebrities, who endorse brands for their own personal gain.

Considering how trustworthy and well-liked these influencers are, it seems as if Itsines’s rejection of the term “bikini body” will be backed by her audience as well. With a groundswell of support, this hopefully will lead to a larger revolution — and maybe even more public figures will follow suit in being more mindful of the language they use in their posts.

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