This September I sat on the front rows at Fashion Week, on edge, genuinely ready to catch the girls should they faint on their way down the catwalk. I haven’t seen this many models look so tired, frail and malnourished in over a decade.
Their hair was thinner, their eyes were glazed, their shoulders hunched, and a limp totter had replaced the struts and saunters that runways were once designed for. Less than a handful of models with curves were anywhere to be seen. It’s as if the size diversity of the past decade was nothing more than a fever dream.
Pin thin at any cost is back in. On and off the runways. Online, on the street, in offices, even schools – women and girls are sourcing weight-loss meds from people who aren’t doctors, they’re removing their Brazilian butt lifts (BBLs) and tossing their push-up bras. It is the panicked return of the waif.
I can’t believe we are seeing a resurgence of this aesthetic. I never thought we would be back here again. In 2024. We keep just going round and round in this hell loop. But right on schedule, just as the progress we’ve been making had made some of us daringly comfortable in our bodies, the uniform of ‘glamorous emaciation’ is back.
I can see how it was able to lock us into a chokehold in previous generations, but it’s baffling that it’s made a comeback now in the age of information. We couldn’t have more information about the dangers to our physical and mental health from malnourishment. We know so much about the prevalence of eating disorders and how girls as young as four are expressing worries about weight. We know that forcing women to chase unrealistic beauty standards is a weapon of patriarchy. We know it is there to distract us, tire us and keep us physically and psychologically small. So how on earth is this happening? How do we keep falling for this trick?
My theory is that it’s in part of our innate human nature. We are a social species designed to exist within groups for our survival. For thousands of years we’ve been able to keep each other safe in numbers, knowing we are vulnerable alone. So, on some level, whatever said trend may be, we are vulnerable to giving into it, for fear of being left out, or behind. Our brains mistake nasty comments online, criticism, or threats of ridicule over our appearance, for life-or-death danger, and send our nervous systems into panic
While the idea of a body type being a trend is so ludicrous and depressing that it hurts, it makes sense that if our culture at large is pushing a beauty standard – and women have been conditioned since birth to believe their value in society is based on their physical appearance – that we would fall in line.
One of the amazing and gutting things about getting older is that you see history repeat itself again and again, in politics, in media and in the fads that dictate what your face and body should look like, regardless of how unnatural, dangerous or expensive it is to achieve. It’s why you just sort of chill out around my age (38), because you know and understand the playbook and can’t be arsed to panic any more. This is how I feel about the body negativity trend darkening our doorstep once more. I can guarantee that, within a few years, curves will be back again. And everyone who injected themselves to lose fat will feel pressured to inject fat back in. The deadly BBL will have its day again. And then a few years after that we will be told to lose weight again, then gain it back, and so on and so forth.
Ultimately, this losing game has less to do with how we look and everything to do with how we spend our money and our time. Distracted. Anxious. Navel gazing. Not building our futures, but rather risking them with an emergency quick fix for something that was never broken.
I can’t be bothered to participate this time around. I’m tired and I’m bored. I did it last time. I’m never going to recover from the stupid things I did to be thinner than my poor body was supposed to be. I’ve learned my lesson the hard way and know that what- ever size I am or may become, it will go in and out of fashion until the day I die. When it comes to the fear of being separated from the herd by standing out aesthetically, it’s taken me decades to realise: you cannot be left behind in a cycle. The loop will come back around to find you soon enough. So, if you can: sit tight. This too shall pass.
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