Emma Roma Jayne
On a family trip in 2022, Emma Roma Jayne stayed in the car as everyone else went to the beach. The thought of being in shorts in public, and having the body she was so insecure about on display, made her feel viscerally uncomfortable.
Roma Jayne, a TikTok creator and influencer partnership manager based in Australia, had always struggled with her weight. She tried to eat healthily, trying different diets and exercising "all the time," but she wasn't losing weight.
After the beach trip, her mom told her enough was enough.
Emma Roma Jayne
"She was like, 'This isn't right. You're 22. You should be enjoying your life and be able to go to the beach whenever you want and feel comfortable.' She suggested that I should get weight loss surgery like she had," Roma Jayne told Business Insider.
So, in 2023, Roma Jayne had bariatric surgery, and her relationship with food and her body has been totally different since.
"At first, I was very much like, 'That's cheating. You need to put in the hard work to lose weight.' But I looked at weight loss surgery as a way that I could stop the food noise and then change my lifestyle, because I didn't want to spend the next 10 years still struggling with the same issues," she said.
She lost around 110 pounds in the year after the surgery. Now 24, she's lost a further 22 pounds in the year since — and kept the weight off — having made huge lifestyle changes; she now works out six times a week and eats a high-protein, low-carb, balanced diet.
Emma Roma Jayne
While bariatric surgery is becoming less common, per one recent study, weight loss is booming as more people are prescribed drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro to lose weight.
Weight loss surgery "is the best decision I have ever made in my entire life," Roma Jayne said. "It has transformed my life completely."
Aside from the obvious, Roma Jayne has noticed seven unexpected changes after her weight loss.
"There's no beating around the bush, I was definitely treated differently when I was bigger," Roma Jayne said. "People were just not as friendly, but they are so nice to me now."
She said that people hold doors for her, greet her in the street, and strike up conversations with her now, whereas before she lost weight she felt "invisible."
"One of the more random changes that I didn't even know that was a thing is that my feet shrunk," Roma Jayne said.
She has four pairs of shoes, all in different sizes, which she bought as her feet got smaller as she lost weight.
Her feet are slimmer now, and she went from a US size 9 shoe to a 7.5.
A 2014 study published in the Turkish Journal of Surgery found that 80% of the 212 participants, who all underwent bariatric surgery, bought shoes at least one size smaller a year after the surgery. The researchers suggested this could be because of fat loss on the foot, as well as the arches getting higher once there is less weight pushing them down.
Roma Jayne also said that her voice has gotten higher and sounds more clear since her surgery.
There's not much research on the impacts of weight loss on voice. A few small, limited studies have suggested that there could be minor changes to people's voices after bariatric surgery, but the differences aren't noticeable enough to hear.
Emma Roma Jayne
Roma Jayne has previously struggled with acne, but found that her skin cleared up when she lost weight.
She said that she eats a low-carb diet and has cut out sugar. According to the American Academy of Dermatology Association, eating high-glycemic foods that raise your blood sugar quickly — such as white bread, potato chips, pastries, and white rice — is associated with acne.
Roma Jayne also has PCOS, of which acne is a symptom. The UK's National Health Service said that weight loss can improve symptoms of PCOS.
Roma Jayne used to hate avocados, and now loves them. She also used to eat a lot of fruit, but now eats far less fruit and far more vegetables.
A systematic review of research, published in the Nutrition Journal in 2023, found that across 26 studies, it seemed that weight gain and obesity could change people's perception of tastes, and increase their preferences for sweetness. However, the authors said that these results weren't conclusive and that more research needs to be done.
Emma Roma Jayne
When Roma Jayne lost weight, she said that she dealt with "a lot of jealousy and resentment from friends."
"I realized that they were my friends when I was bigger because I made them feel better about themselves," she said. "But now that I'm on my own journey and bettering myself and making these healthy changes, suddenly they had a problem with that."
"When I was bigger, I definitely used my size as a shield to protect myself from other people knowing the real me. Now that I feel so much more confident in myself and I have so much appreciation and love for myself," Roma Jayne said.
"I'm the most confident version of myself that I've ever been, and I continue to get more and more confident every day."
She said that surrounding herself with the right people has also improved her confidence.
Alesandra Dubin
Ten years ago, I carried my twins to full term, and they came out big and healthy.
However, my pregnant belly was enormous, and my overstretched ab muscles couldn't come back together after pregnancy, leaving me with a significant case of diastasis recti (abdominal-muscle separation) and a rounded-out belly.
This took a major toll on my body image, which, in turn, affected the way I dressed myself. Instead of expressing my personal style through my clothes — something I'd always loved to do — I built a wardrobe around simply trying to hide my waist area.
Feeling like it was time for a change, I started working with Chellie Carlson, a stylist based in my Los Angeles neighborhood.
Over the course of two meetings, Carlson helped me shop my closet and found one major mistake I was making that sabotaged my entire look.
Alesandra Dubin
During our meetings, Carlson sorted through my clothes and explained that my approach to hiding my midsection was actually making me look bigger in the area I wanted to deemphasize.
My clothes were exaggerating my proportions rather than streamlining them — which wasn't doing me any favors.
She explained that the more flattering approach would be to accentuate my waistline with tailored tops and belts.
So, under Carlson's guidance, I took all my peplum tops out of the closet and tossed them into the donation pile.
She also encouraged me to take a billowing shirt — like my favorite silky button-down — and tuck it into my pants for a more flattering and polished look.
Alesandra Dubin
For my other loose-fitting tops — like graphic T-shirts — she showed me how to use a clear hair elastic to invisibly cinch them in the back, creating a more fitted and flattering silhouette.
Alesandra Dubin
After working with the stylist, I felt inspired to buy some new pieces in the spirit of dressing with confidence. However, this time, I was driven by a neutral attitude toward my form instead of a self-loathing one.
Based on Carlson's suggestions, I'm now layering my slimmer-fitting tops with oversize blazers or outer layers, which help elongate my torso and balance the look. I'm also pairing everything with high-waisted and wider-leg pants that help me strike a more proportional — and current — style.
Overall, I couldn't be happier with the results of our meetings. The closet overhaul boosted my confidence and inspired me to express my personal style again.
I still won't be wearing crop tops or clingy dresses — this isn't a story about suddenly finding absolute peace with a changed body — but I've learned to express myself in a way that better complements my body.
Mae Suzuki/ Benji Xavier/Alaias Bertrand
Three people who lost weight sustainably after years of yo-yo dieting shared the most valuable lessons they learned about fat loss.
Weight loss and restrictive diet culture are almost synonymous in our culture, meaning most people who want to lose fat start by cutting out the foods they enjoy. But research shows that this rarely works long-term, and eating too few calories can have unintended health consequences, such as malnutrition, disordered eating, and fertility problems.
Experts who have spoken to Business Insider in the past agree that to lose weight you need to be in a calorie deficit, burning more calories than you consume — but that shouldn't mean going hungry, cutting out entire food groups, or spending hours doing exercise that you dread.
Three people who learned this through experience shared what helped them lose fat in a healthy way.
"You can't shame yourself into weight loss," Alaias Bertrand, a 25-year-old content creator and marketer in Florida who lost 75 pounds in three years, previously told BI.
Alaias Bertrand
Bertrand said she previously tried "everything under the sun" to lose weight, including diets like keto and intermittent fasting. But they didn't work because she was too focused on the end result, and she was hungry all the time, she said.
It was only when she started making lifestyle changes for her health and wellbeing that she lost weight naturally.
"My adjustments became less about 'I need to look a certain way' and more so 'I want to feel a certain way. I want to feel good in my body,'" she said.
Benji Xavier, a 28-year-old content creator, lost 100 pounds in just over a year, and has kept it off for two years, by making healthier versions of his favorite foods at home.
DK Publishing
Xavier, who is based in New Jersey, previously lost 100 pounds in high school by "falling victim to toxic diet culture" and heavily limiting what he ate. But it left him obsessed with food and miserable, and he regained the weight a few years later.
In August 2021, he tried to lose weight again but was determined not to restrict himself.
"I was just sick of it. I'm like, 'no, I can't do this. I can't torture myself anymore. I'm just going to try to eat healthier.' And it worked," he said. "You can still have foods that you enjoy and lose weight."
Mae Suzuki, a content creator based in New York, lost 40 pounds after being stuck in a cycle of restrictive dieting and bingeing for years.
Mae Suzuki
She used to force herself to do boot camp-style workouts that she hated and eat food that she didn't like. When she didn't see the scale shift after a few weeks, she would give up because she wasn't enjoying the process, she previously told BI.
Suzuki realized that she needed to make the process fun, so she joined a gym and tried all the different classes until she found what she actually enjoyed. She learned that she loved weightlifting but wasn't so keen on cardio.
"Once I stopped focusing on the things that I didn't like in order to lose weight, that's when I saw gradual but consistent weight loss," she said.
Bertrand said she found adding a social element, whether that's a friend, coach, or team, can help with motivation when losing weight.
"When you tell someone that you respect and admire a goal of yours, you are more likely to accomplish it," she said.
For her, being a member of her high school and college track and field team was a catalyst for learning how to fuel her body, stay active, and be held accountable.
Alaias Bertrand
Xavier said that focusing on little milestones helped him stay motivated. "If I were to sit here and think 'I need to lose 100 pounds,' that's a lot. You don't want to do that," he said.
Fixating on his end goal made him feel overwhelmed and discouraged when life got in the way and he didn't achieve his goal as quickly as he had planned.
"It takes time to achieve your goals, and you get there step by step, not all at once."
He added: "Just take it day by day, week by week."
Arturo Holmes/Getty Images
Florence Pugh has opened up about what it's like to be a young woman in Hollywood, describing the experience as "exhausting."
In an interview with The Times of London published on Sunday, the 28-year-old British star reflected on her decadelong career as an actor and issues in the industry.
"There are fine lines women have to stay within, otherwise they are called a diva, demanding, problematic. And I don't want to fit into stereotypes made by others," Pugh said. "It is really exhausting for a young woman to just be in this industry, and actually other industries."
Pugh rose to fame after making her movie debut in "The Falling" in 2014. She followed that up with roles in "Midsommar," "Black Widow," "Oppenheimer," "Dune: Part Two," and "Little Women" — the latter of which earned her an Oscar nomination.
Pugh told The Times that throughout her career, she had loved challenging ideas she didn't like, such as how women in the public eye are expected to look.
"I remember watching this industry and feeling that I wasn't represented. I remember godawful headlines about how Keira Knightley isn't thin anymore, or watching women getting torn apart despite being talented and beautiful," she said. "The only thing people want to talk about is some useless crap about how they look. And so I didn't care to abide by those rules."
Pugh has frequently spoken out over comments to do with her body or look.
In 2019, the actor called out a publication for "singling out my 'chunky' thighs" in a review of one of her movies.
The "We Live in Time" star also told The Telegraph in 2022 that she was told to lose weight and change her "look" when she was cast in a failed television pilot at the start of her career.
Pugh also spoke out over comments she received after wearing a transparent pink gown to a Valentino Haute Couture show in 2022.
In the interview with The Times, Pugh said: "I wanted to challenge how women were perceived, how we are supposed to look."
"Actually I wasn't trying to challenge. I just wanted to be there, to make space for a version of a person that isn't all the things they used to have to be," Pugh said. "I'm proud I've stuck by myself and look the way I look — I'm really interested in people who are still angry with me for not losing more weight, or who just hate my nose ring."
"I am not going to be able to just change the way that things are — but I can certainly help young women coming into this industry by making conversations happen where they weren't before," she added.
The actor recently revealed that she had been previously diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome and endometriosis and that it had prompted her to freeze her eggs.
dusanpetkovic/Getty Images
Shutterstock, founded in 2003 and based in New York, is a global leader in licensed digital content. It offers stock photos, videos, and music to creative professionals and enterprises.
In late 2022, Shutterstock made a strategic decision to embrace generative AI, becoming one of the first stock-content providers to integrate the tech into its platform.
Dade Orgeron, the vice president of innovation at Shutterstock, leads the company's artificial-intelligence initiatives. During his tenure, Shutterstock has transitioned from a traditional stock-content provider into one that provides several generative-AI services.
While Shutterstock's generative-AI offerings are focused on images, the company has an application programming interface for generating 3D models and plans to offer video generation.
When the first mainstream image-generation models, such as Dall-E, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney, were released in late 2022, Shutterstock recognized generative AI's potential to disrupt its business.
"It would be silly for me to say that we didn't see generative AI as a potential threat," Orgeron said. "I think we were fortunate at the beginning to realize that it was more of an opportunity."
He said Shutterstock embraced the technology ahead of many of its customers. He recalled attending CES in 2023 and said that many creative professionals there were unaware of generative AI and the impact it could have on the industry.
Orgeron said that many industry leaders he encountered had the misconception that generative AI would "come in and take everything from everyone." But that perspective felt pessimistic, he added. But Shutterstock recognized early that AI-powered prompting "was design," Orgeron told Business Insider.
Orgeron's position as vice president of innovation made him responsible for guiding the company's generative-AI strategy and development.
However, the move toward generative AI was preceded by earlier acquisitions. Orgeron himself joined the company in 2021 as part of its acquisition of TurboSquid, a company focused on 3D assets.
Photo courtesy of Dade Orgeron
Shutterstock also acquired three AI companies that same year: Pattern89, Datasine, and Shotzr. While they primarily used AI for data analytics, Orgeron said the expertise Shutterstock gained from these acquisitions helped it move aggressively on generative AI.
Externally, Shutterstock established partnerships with major tech companies including Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, OpenAI, Nvidia, and Reka. For example, Shutterstock's partnership with Nvidia enabled its generative 3D service.
Shutterstock's approach to AI integration focused on the user experience.
Orgeron said the company's debut in image generation was "probably the easiest-to-use solution at that time," with a simple web interface that made AI image generation accessible to creative professionals unfamiliar with the technology.
That stood in contrast to competitors such as Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, which, at the time Shutterstock launched its service in January 2023, had a basic user interface. Midjourney, for instance, was initially available only through Discord, an online chat service more often used to communicate in multiplayer games.
This focus on accessibility set the stage for Shutterstock.AI, the company's dedicated AI-powered image-generation platform. While Shutterstock designed the tool's front end and integrated it into its online offerings, the images it generates rely on a combination of internally trained AI models and solutions from external partners.
Shutterstock.AI, like other image generators, lets customers request their desired image with a text prompt and then choose a specific image style, such as a watercolor painting or a photo taken with a fish-eye lens.
However, unlike many competitors, Shutterstock uses information about user interactions to decide on the most appropriate model to meet the prompt and style request. Orgeron said Shutterstock's various models provide an edge over other prominent image-generation services, which often rely on a single model.
But generative AI posed risks to Shutterstock's core business and to the photographers who contribute to the company's library. To curb this, Orgeron said, all of its AI models, whether internal or from partners, are trained exclusively on Shutterstock's legally owned data. The company also established a contributor fund to compensate content creators whose work was used in the models' training.
Orgeron said initial interest in Shutterstock.AI came from individual creators and small businesses. Enterprise customers followed more cautiously, taking time to address legal concerns and establish internal AI policies before adopting the tech. However, Orgeron said, enterprise interest has accelerated as companies recognize AI's competitive advantages.
Paul Hennessy, the CEO of Shutterstock, said in June the company earned $104 million in annual revenue from AI licensing agreements in 2023. He also projected that this revenue could reach up to $250 million annually by 2027.
Looking ahead, Shutterstock hopes to expand AI into its video and 3D offerings. The company's generative 3D API is in beta. While it doesn't offer an AI video-generation service yet, Orgeron said Shutterstock plans to launch a service soon. "The video front is where everyone is excited right now, and we are as well," he said. "For example, we see tremendous opportunity in being able to convert imagery into videos."
The company also sees value in AI beyond revenue figures. Orgeron said Shutterstock is expanding its partnerships, which now include many of the biggest names in Silicon Valley. In some cases, partners allow Shutterstock to use their tech to build new services; in others, they license data from Shutterstock to train AI.
"We're partnered with Nvidia, with Meta, with HP. These are great companies, and we're working closely with them," he said. "It's another measure to let us know we're on the right track."
Sarah Morris/WireImage
Billie Eilish says she developed body image issues as a tween because of her obsession with the one-size clothing brand Brandy Melville.
In an interview with Complex published on Thursday, the singer opened up about how the fast-fashion brand heavily impacted the way she viewed her body.
The "What Was I Made For?" singer said that all she wore as a child were fairy dresses and skirts, even though she's now known for her baggy streetwear style.
"I never wore pants or shorts when I was a little kid," Eilish told Complex. "But when I got to be about 11, I got obsessed with this brand called Brandy Melville. And they only sold clothes in one size. I was chubbier and I was obsessed with these clothes, but I'd buy a shirt and it wouldn't fit me. That's when my body problems started. I was around the age of 10 or 11."
She shared that she went through puberty early and that she "wasn't slim." Not only that, being in ballet further exacerbated her body image issues, she said.
"I was wearing all these baggy clothes, and it was my style, but at the same time, it was how I could feel comfortable in my body and not feel tied to how my body looks. I didn't want my body to be part of my outfit. I wanted my outfit to be my outfit, and my body happens to be inside it," Eilish said.
Brandy Melville is a popular clothing brand known for selling basics like crop tops and mini skirts, and its "one size fits most" sizing policy.
In 2021, the brand came under fire for claims regarding a toxic and exploitative workplace culture. Several Brandy Melville employees told Business Insider's Kate Taylor that the company's top execs frequently discriminated against non-white employees, crossed professional boundaries with its young retail employees, and made sexist and antisemitic jokes. Brandy Melville did not offer any comment to BI in 2021 in response to the allegations.
In December 2022, the owners of Brandy Melville agreed to pay $1.45 million to settle claims from former workers that the retailer had violated California labor laws by forcing them to work "off the clock" and without breaks. However, they denied all wrongdoing in the court documents.
In July, Brandy Melville opened a sister store — named St. George — in Santa Monica, California, where some items are now available in a "medium" size, The Cut reported.
Representatives for Eilish and Brandy Melville did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent by Business Insider outside regular hours.
