“The end of the BBL era”, “Are small breasts the new trend of 2021?” “UK Vogue says boobs are out”. It’s easy to see headlines and statements like this, pushed by the fashion and beauty industry, and not think too much of it. We may even feel comforted if it’s our body type that’s now “fashionable”, especially if it had been the opposite before.
Some of us are just so used to our bodies coming in and out as fashion trends we don’t even look twice at a headline like this…but let’s look twice. For as long as most of us can remember, female bodies have been a hot topic in the fashion and beauty industry and most recently social media space, with the ideal structure, shape, curves, or lack of, changing all the time.
Recently, after seeing a tweet commenting on the “end of the BBL era” which noted how ridiculous a statement like that is, I really started to explore how we talk about women’s bodies, and how it is impossible to keep up with what is preferable for a woman to look like. Although the hourglass, big bum and slim waist silhouette are popular now, arguably because of celebrities like the Kardashians, this wasn’t always the case; not long ago it was an insult to be told you had a big bum.
When I thought about this, I recalled one of my favourite comfort shows, ‘Friends’, aired in the 90s, in which it was a running theme among the women that a big bum was bad and something to be avoided. The same goes for the film ‘Mean Girls’ in which having a big bum is also framed as a bad thing for school mean girl, Regina George. To think that it was only then that no one wanted an hourglass figure and were made to feel bad for having those features, which are now hugely sought after, with people even undergoing dangerous surgeries to achieve.
After this realisation, I decided to look more into how women’s body types have changed, to really paint and understand the picture of women’s bodies being treated like a fashion trend. And it was clear, since what seems like forever, what’s “in” for a female body type is forever changing and fast; it leaves many women struggling and insecure trying to chase this ever-changing ideal.
Over time, what has been deemed an ideal body has changed hugely, again and again, even circling back a few times, highlighting the ridiculousness of the pressure to keep up with it. In the 1920s, the ideal “flapper girl” body looked like a woman with small hips, a slender frame with little to no curves, and it was sexy to have a flat chest.
Further back in the renaissance era it was fashionable to have a rounded stomach and full hips, a complete opposite to the nineties, where an extremely thin body without a curvy bum and hips were sought after- they were all the rage. This might be the point in this article where you think why is this important? Yes, the ideal female body has changed again and again, but so what?
The point is that this proves two things. (A) the media treats the female body like a mere trend, constraining what a sexy female body looks like to whatever new standard has become popular and fits with fashion trends- it is constantly changing and breeding huge insecurity for no reason at all. (B) Although easier said than done, none of it is actually real and none of it matters – flat stomachs and big bums aren’t just the only way to be beautiful or the only female body types considered sexy, as history has quite literally shown.
The world has found beauty at one point or another in every female shape, the craze of an hourglass is just what the fashion industry is pushing right now, but they don’t get to decide what’s beautiful, and we should all try to stop bending over backwards to keep up with their ever-changing made-up standards. Our bodies are the very thing that keep us alive, allow us to laugh, allow us to experience the world, and for some women birth new lives – they are way more than the trends that Vogue wants you to believe they are.
There’s no easy way to do it, to stop seeing the same body type pushed by fashion brands on your Instagram, to stop over-thinking and worrying that the body that you have doesn’t fit the standard, to stop convincing yourself you need another shape to be happy. But it’s as important as ever to remind ourselves that we are not a trend, we don’t define beautiful so strictly and so unimaginatively as one body type; big bums, small bums, small boobs, rounded tummy’s, hip dips etc aren’t not sexy all of a sudden because a fashion magazine says so.
There is way more to any of us than our shapes anyway – but it’s important to support confidence and comfortableness in our own bodies, so that these silly unattainable beauty standards don’t chip away at us all.
If I could give any advice, which at times I should take myself too, it would be don’t worry too much about changing yourself for today’s body standard – because it will have changed by tomorrow, but your confidence shouldn’t.
Words by: Rebekah Thomas
Edited by: Tamikka Reid