Trigger warning: mentions of body image, disordered eating & eating disorders, body dysmorphia.
Eating disorder helpline: eating-disorders.org.uk /0845 838 2040.
The 90’s have once again returned in full force. While 90’s and early 2000s inspired fashion has been making a comeback for quite a while now, the full on return has become increasingly embodied and pushed into the world’s spotlight. Nylon writer Rachel Rabbit White encapsulates this return in her description of the Miu Miu Spring 2023 show, which features women strutting in, using her words, low rise hip-bone-baring clothes, with the Miu Miu viral micro low rise mini skirt particularly garnering attention as it was so well crafted, it appeared to be “pulled from the archives of Paris Hilton’s early aughts closet.” Similarly, the show featured a short film which mocked BBL surgeries, emphasizing the return to the 90’s and away from what is commonly labeled as the BBL era, which is often thought of as a pivotal point in fashion as it deviated from the previous Eurocentric beauty standards and standardized the body shape of having a larger butt and hips commonly associated with Black women, although it still prioritized a thin waist. The return of the 90’s demonstrates the fashion industry’s ephemeral nature as well as its nostalgic tendencies, in which it reproduces and reconfigures old eras; as Bazaar writer Tristen Lee describes, the 90’s is now perceived as a gilded era of fashion, known as “the decade of grunge, Calvin Klein, and the slip dress.” Yet, this era was ultimately one of the worst for creating deeply problematic beauty standards, notorious for its promotion of slut-shaming culture, the heroin chic aesthetic, and Kate Moss’s coinage of the problematic, notorious phrase [major trigger warning] “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” that put thinness on the highest of pedestals. The shift towards the 90’s and its glamorization of ultra thinness reveals not only the insatiable desire of the fashion industry to endlessly evolve, but also the fact that bodies and in turn identities can be packaged into trends.Â
I am sure we have all observed the ramifications of trending bodies: when low rise pants, shiny flats, and chunky heels began to populate the streets again, they were accompanied by a sharp shift into the glamorization of thinness. Celebrities helped emphasize this new trending body, one of the most infamous examples being Kim Kardashian declaring her quick weight loss to the public so that she could wear Marilyn Monroe’s dress, which, as Kate Ng writes, “firmly implanted [thinness] into the public consciousness.” According to specialists Dr. Alison Fixen, Dr. Magdalena Kossewaka, and Dr. Aurore Bardey, who published an article titled I’m Skinny, I’m Worth More: Fashion Model’s Experiences of Aesthetic Labor and Its Impact on Body Image and Eating Behaviors, mental health issues including negative body image, eating disorders, and body dysmorphia are linked to the fashion and modelling industry. Through studying the modeling industry and its link to mental health, they identified four prominent themes: female model’s bodies become akin to a market product which trains them to constantly and anxiously monitor their bodies, disordered eating among models is often glamorized, models experienced the degradation and objectification of their bodies, and that these industries instill toxic ideology surrounding beauty into them from a young, formative age that aid in the construction of negative body image and eating disorders. These themes are not only limited to the experiences of models and the modeling industry, but also spread to the individuals who become the targets of these industries’ advertisements.Â
As a young woman living in the first generation to grow up with social media, I am no stranger to the ramifications of these advertisements. The invention of social media and the advancement of technology that defined Gen Z’s childhood and teenage years has allowed unhealthy, toxic beauty standards to spread further than they ever have before. While these industries used to have to work hard to permeate magazine pages and develop near-religious readership, nowadays consumerism is at our fingertips, constantly incentivizing us to give into the rabbit hole of the internet. Every day, I and thousands of other young women are the primary targets of endlessly advertised makeup products, clothes, shoes, purses, hairstyles, workouts, diets, and filters; I am told if I had a certain body shape (either achieved through workouts or cosmetic procedures), facial features, workout routine, and products that I would finally be beautiful. Similarly, apps like TikTok and Instagram encourage us to perform anxious and ritualistic assessments of our bodies, with the platform hosting endless body-checking videos in which people show an undesirable physical feature and consciously or unconsciously teach viewers how to recognize these features on themselves. It feels like no matter how hard I try to pull away, I am made a subject of these industries by simply being a woman on the internet with an algorithm that knows it. The sheer amount of mental energy women are expected to funnel towards their appearance, recited to them every day through these apps, is to be honest: fucking exhausting. Â
Perhaps the most insidious part of these industries and their profiting off insecurities is not only these companies’ intentional perpetuation of toxic beauty standards on apps like Instagram and TikTok, in which they churn out highly photoshopped and airbrushed images of models, but also how they have turned every day people into advertisers and perpetrators of the ideologies behind trends. Every day, billions of people go onto the internet and post content of themselves, creating casual videos about fashion and beauty while mimicking and glamorizing the looks and ideas these industries push forth. While posting this content and being passionate about fashion can be a highly positive, creative form of expression, it can also feed into problematic ideals. The fact that it is incredibly easy to slip into problematic ideals emphasizes the importance of constantly thinking about what we post and consume on the internet. We need to ask ourselves critical questions: as we glamorize and push our nostalgia for 90’s trends back into the public eye, how are our choices in our portrayal of this decade pushing forward trends that exclude virtually everyone who is not a white, thin cisgender woman? How are we falling back into the glamorization of disordered eating and the heroin chic aesthetic through remaining stagnant in our nostalgia? As Rachel Rabbit White points out, how does the sudden hatred of the BBL and the supposed end of the BBL era go deeper than just a fashion trend? In White’s analysis of Sociologist Sabrina Strings Fearing the Black Body, white supremacy has linked the white body to “rational self control” aligned with Christian values while the look of the BBL has long been associated with exoticizing of Black women and Black culture. While there may not be an obvious link, the rise of WhatIEatInADayVideos and other trends that glamorize the thin, often white body curate an environment in which negative body image not only flourishes but is brutally ingrained into society.Â
It is important that within the fashion industry, which serves as an incredible medium to express identity, we create an environment that is inclusive towards everyone. The more I watch bodies go in and out of trend, the more I realize nothing will ever satiate societal beauty standards. If we were allowed to ever be truly and wholly beautiful by these industries, they would cease to be. While we may think we are just random people and that we have no influence, we are the people who influence the choices these industries make and therefore, we are agents capable of shaping fashion trends, art, and beauty. Therefore, it is important we practice active awareness and critical thinking. We need to be aware of what we choose to consume, post, repost, and create. Through those who refused to conform to one idea of beauty, the body positivity movement was able to garner momentum, creating significant progress in achieving diversity in the industry through celebrating the beauty of a vast array of different body shapes and sizes. Ultimately, the ability to feel comfortable and beautiful in your own body is undeniably one of the hardest accomplishments when you’ve been taught by industries your whole life to hate your physical appearance. I am not quite sure I know how to do it. Yet, the more we critically think about and continue to have discussions surrounding these issues, the more we are able to use fashion as a creative tool to truthfully and wholly express ourselves and society.