Houses Get Bigger, Women Get Smaller
Thoughts on Nabela Noor's recent glow-up, and who diet culture is when she's at home.
Last week, influencer Nabela Noor Martin posted a reel with this caption: “POV: You decided to pour into your own cup first and your whole life changed.”
The video cycles through casual old pics of Nabela, a beauty YouTuber turned “designer, author and homemaker,” who now has 2.6 million Instagram followers and 7.7 million on TikTok. She looks happy in each shot, but they are decidedly candid. She’s wearing little makeup, there is no aesthetic consistency in the backgrounds, and Nabela looks like the plus size beauty influencer she became famous as. Then the reel cuts to more recent footage: Nabela doing her makeup in her walk-in closet. Nabela working out in her home Pilates studio. Nabela making a green vegetable-heavy meal in her luxury marble kitchen.
Nabela, looking happy, yes, but also tinier than we’ve ever seen her before.
I’ve been clocking this shift in Nabela’s content for awhile because she is the rare home and lifestyle influencer to reach those numbers who isn’t a tiny blonde white lady.
Yes, her home decor aesthetic includes all white furniture, which boggles the mind when you see footage of her (perfectly dressed) toddler daughters.
Yes, her husband is a marketably attractive thin white guy and a lot of their reels show off their luxury cars and high end appliances.
And yes, they recently traded one impeccably renovated mansion for an even bigger and even more expensively renovated mansion.
But Nabela has never been the cookie cutter influencer type. She’s Bangladeshi American, plus size, and the author of Beautifully Me, a body positive children’s book that pushes back against dieting and body shaming in smart and thoughtful ways. And while so many momfluencers have gone MAGA, Nabela spoke at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, endorsing Harris and the fight for reproductive rights.
But now Nabela is telling her followers to “choose you,” and explaining her physical changes as proof that she is finally “putting my own oxygen mask on first.” She’s making her husband’s favorite meal, but she’s drinking green juice. And it all makes sense: In an industry dominated by whiteness and thinness, Nabela Noor was only going to last so long without playing the game.