Yes, Kim Kardashian’s waist looked impossibly tiny at this year’s Met Gala. And yes, I am absolutely thinking the same thing as you: where exactly are her organs?!
But while discourse swirls around the star setting yet more unrealistic beauty standards in her incredibly tight Maison Margiela corset, I wonder if we need to look past the tiny waist and open up a wider conversation about current aesthetic ideals.
Celebrities have long set the beauty standard: Marilyn Monroe was the 1950s epitome of beauty, with her hourglass silhouette prompting a demand for girdles that cinched in the waist; the 1960s saw British fashion model Twiggy shoot to fame, and her waif-like, androgynous figure was coveted the world over, and supermodels stormed the 1990s, with Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington representing the body du jour – tall and thin, yet still athletic and curvaceous.
The meteoric rise to fame of the Kardashians set a new standard in the 2000s. We shifted from desiring the ‘heroin chic’, skinnier-the-better look to exaggerated curves, albeit ones in ‘all the right places’ – think big boobs, big bum but small waist and thin arms, legs and face. This sparked a dramatic increase in the demand for the Brazilian bum lift (BBL) procedure, where liposuction is used to remove fat from the body (usually the stomach, leaving a smaller waist) and reinjected into the hips and bum. The incidence of the surgery, despite the long and painful healing process and terrifying associated death rate, was reported to have risen by 77.5 per cent from 2015 to 2020.
Ready for the kicker? 2022 saw the Kardashians dramatically slim down, with many reporting that the reality TV stars had reversed their BBLs. A slew of stars followed suit by losing vast amounts of weight, somewhat suspiciously at the precise time that weight loss drug Ozempic exploded onto the market and changed the diet culture landscape.
The red carpets of 2024 have had a common theme: thin. We’ve arguably never seen such a lack of body diversity as we are witnessing in the celebrity sphere recently, and Kim was certainly not the only star displaying tiny proportions at this year’s iconic Met Gala.
But where does this leave us? Here’s my two cents: beauty standards have existed for centuries, and we’ve always pursued them for ourselves, particularly as women. That’s not our fault: we’re primed by society to chase beauty, however that looks at any given time (celebrities, too – let’s not forget that they are also victims of their own environment). But surely now is the time we stop looking to the celebrity of the moment to tell us how to look and instead set our own beauty standards?
If we don’t rebel against a system that has burdened women since way before you and I were even born, if we keep chasing whatever’s in, how are we ever going to win? How can we score when the goalposts keep moving?
So while it might be important to acknowledge the potential impact of Kim very publicly displaying a beauty standard that is entirely unattainable for the vast majority of us, I believe it’s even more vital to understand that we can – and should – simply see these standards for what they are: often entirely unrealistic and categorically not something we should aspire to. It would be physically impossible for me to look like Kim, but even if it wasn’t, why would I spend my precious time, energy and money trying? What an arbitrary pursuit that would undoubtedly leave me feeling unfulfilled – not to mention the fact that it would only be desirable until the next beauty standard took hold. Exhausting.
It's easier said than done (trust me, after decades of battling eating disorders and terrible body image, I know this all too well) but we desperately need – both individually and collectively – to stop focusing on how our and other women’s bodies look.
Imagine a world where we all adopted a neutral approach to the vessels that allow us to navigate the world? Where we all just looked like… ourselves. Exactly as we were meant to look.
Because that’s where real beauty lies. Not in a tiny waist or a big bum, but in diversity. The fact that we all look so incredibly different is exciting and magical, and something that should be celebrated, not ‘fixed’.