Thin is back in style, but did it ever really go away? | Eating disorders

me Respect the Halloween tradition of successfully garrisoning what, on any other night, would refuse to be garrisoned. Scrolling through the photos last week I saw multiple horny ghosts, multiple horny Toy Story characters. I saw many, many cleavages, one attached to a Minion, and I saw the butts of Marge Simpson and Cinderella. But while I always applaud mission, which never goes out of style, something else caught my eye this year: thinness.

“Delgado is back,” the style press cautiously reports. When Kim Kardashian wore the old Marilyn Monroe dress to the Met Gala, most of the news focused on the disrespectful museum piece scandal. But for the women, especially the young women, the real story unfolded in paragraphs four and five: It was the extreme diet Kardashian went on, eating only the “cleanest vegetables and proteins” to fit that sparkly dress. Similar diets were happening in student kitchens across the UK and being shared online in well-lit hashtags and videos. It’s no coincidence that this cultural shift, these taut-belly vast plains Halloween costumes, coincide with the return of Y2K fashion. With the return of baby T-shirts and low-rise jeans, many recalled how such clothing helped inspire us to the idea that it wasn’t that these clothes didn’t fit our bodies, but rather that our bodies didn’t fit. this clothes. .

On TikTok, the popularity of searches like “heroin chic body” has led to more fragile observations that “skinny is in”: low-rise jeans require a low BMI, baby t-shirt requires, well, no tea . Chic heroine, of course, was the fashionable body shape of the 1990s, its outline drawn faintly in charcoal, the curves small caves, the sharp angles, the CK1 smacks of liquid melancholy. Today’s beauty trends are leaning in the same direction: makeup tutorials show you how to fake dark circles or how to look like you’ve been crying by using a bit of shimmer and blush. Makeup speeds up the process, a kind of diet pill for the skin. In September, Variety published a story about increased demand for Ozempic, a diabetes drug that can lead to dramatic weight loss. Today, in bleak news, the rush for the drug means there is a shortage of diabetic patients whose health depends on it.

Hospital admissions for people with eating disorders in England have increased by 84% in the last five years

And social networks give and take away In the same minute of scrolling, you can see, for example, #WhatIEatInADay videos (one I saw consisted of just “a watermelon”) and astute comments from people like Imani Barbarin (Crutches & Spice on TikTok), whose viral posts warn people parents that the increase in “thin-inspired” content will not only lead to eating disorders, but could also lead their children to the “alt-right” internet; the road from “welfare to fascism” is now demonstratively well trodden. She points to the pandemic as a trigger: the “ideal body”, controlled and active, a place of health, became an obsession for many.

It’s happening. Hospital admissions of people with eating disorders in England have increased by 84% in the last five years. Last January, the eating disorder charity Beat provided the most support sessions for people affected by eating disorders in a single month in its history.

Did the body positivity movement have any impact? I wonder. If it failed, it failed because it never went deep enough: it placed all the responsibility for feeling that positivity on the individual, rather than questioning the fatphobia, sexism, classism, and racism that led to the often violent relationship an individual had with her body. . The only place I really see its effects is where brands quickly learned to replace the quest for thinness with the concept of wellness, cleanliness or empowerment, or used a plus-size model for their campaigns, sometimes forgetting to create clothes in those “plus sizes” for their customers to wear. If thinness is back, and proudly unmasked and without modern health or fitness admonitions, it’s in response to body positive movement. Sometimes we slide back blindly, drawn to the possibility of control at a time when so little seems to be within our grasp.

Body image is a topic I return to time and time again, because it informs so much about how we live, from our success in school to our mental and physical health, to the careers and relationships we have as adults. But he does it in a low voice, a whispery little voice, more like a hiss. And while I’m always dying to comment on these body trends, I do so knowing that it’s dangerous to give them air. Because whether we’re looking at “thin and thick” or “a celebration of curves,” the same seed is at the center of them all: the idea that fat is bad, that it points to immorality, failure, or the uselessness. .

No one came as “fat” for Halloween; some things are still too scary. This season, thinness is in fashion. Which only makes sense, I guess, if you think it ever really disappeared.

Email Eva at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @EvaWiseman

Source: news.google.com