Is my Body Type in Fashion this season?

Toxic beauty standards have been killing us for decades; enough is enough.

Every day we are exposed to increasing amounts of images in different formats, which all hold the intention of presenting what success and happiness is ‘supposed’ to look like. This representation is what perpetuates the beauty standards which continue to dominate popular media and culture. Even subtle presence in the media suggests an approval of someone's lifestyle, influencing millions of impressionable viewers that want to achieve this perceived representation of what perfection is. Not only this, but the media suggests that once you achieve this beauty standard, you will be happy, successful and be respected by men, as well as the entirety of society.

What a detrimental message to be sending to younger generations.

There is no such thing as an ‘ideal.’ It is all relative. What you find attractive, someone else may value as mediocre. What you may perceive perfection to look like, someone may view as deficient to the beauty standard in society, holding a completely juxtaposed idea of what ‘ideal’ even means. Holding the belief that achieving the ‘ideal’ look will bring you happiness can only really end one way. And this is most likely going to be an internal battle with yourself, taking up years of your teenage life which you will later go on to regret.

You will never be happy with yourself unless you stop feeding into the need to meet society’s idea of ‘perfection’. Maybe the only reason I am growing to accept my body is because it is moving closer and closer to meeting society’s beauty standards. The incurable truth is that by the time I’ve learnt self-acceptance, the ideal will have already changed, just for the cycle of self-hatred to begin again.

Women are expected to emulate this notion of perfection across all aspects of their lives, whether this be the way they dress on a Friday night or how hard they work in preparation for an upcoming presentation at work. Women are expected to go the extra mile, just to be viewed on the same level as men.

So, what's next? We go to cosmic extents to try and change our bodies for society’s approval. By the time we have failed, the ideal has already changed. One minute everyone wants to look like Kim K, the next – low rise jeans are back and skinny is coming back in to fashion. It's all just impossible.

"Imagine just not thinking about your body. You are not hating it. You are not loving it. You are just a floating head. I'm a floating head wandering through the world," - Jameela Jamil.

The concept of body neutrality is often not spoke about in the media, compared to the influx of ‘body positivity’ that is plastered over every billboard we see. But it’s not that simple. By just reading ‘body positivity’ under every Instagram post we see of the ‘ideal’ body type, it doesn’t mean we will feel this sense of positivity about our own bodies. Instead, we sit and deliberate how we can fulfil our dream to get their body, and maybe then we’ll feel some form of positivity about ourselves.

Holding its roots in fat acceptance, the body positivity movement has created a community of like-minded individual’s pushing against the social norms that create an ideal standard of beauty. Body positivity initially focused on challenging the unrealistic beauty standards that are set for women in society, focusing later on the notion that “all bodies are beautiful’’ as of 2020. The movement highlights that the beauty industry profits from the socialised insecurities created for us to internalise. Women spend around £483 on beauty products a year (Glamour, 2018) just in the hope of moulding into society’s notion of ‘perfection’. Public figures such as Lizzo and Tess Holliday (founder of ‘effyourbeautystandards’) embrace their diverse plus-size bodies and highlight the body positive movement as a way for women to move closer to self-acceptance, and embracing and loving the skin they’re in.

But the movement isn’t as innocent as you think. When compared with the concept of body neutrality, readers come to terms with the idea that being positive about your body 24/7 isn’t realistic and can even perpetuate toxic expectations for women to feel fulfilled and accepting of their bodies all the time. Rather the ‘neutrality’ aspect focuses predominantly on what your body does for you, rather than what it looks like. On paper, learning to love your body sounds like a no-brainer, yet with body-positivity comes the constant focus of the conversation being body image, which doesn't work for everyone. You are more than your body. Your worth is not dependant on what you look like. When it comes down to it, the way someone looks is often the least interesting thing about a person. The body neutrality movement accepts that you may not love your body all the time and emphasises that this is completely OK. You can accept your body for what it is, even if you don’t completely love it, rather than the notion of toxic positivity being perpetuated even further through the body positivity movement.

So, who even decides what the ideals will be each decade and how is this presented in the media?

With the rise of Marylin Monroe, who eventually became a massive sex symbol and the talk of Hollywood, the 1950’s became a time of celebration and indulgence as a stronger economy was starting to return to the West. She became an icon of the Golden Era who portrayed the look that was most desired at the time and the media began to embrace a ‘fuller’ figure compared to the 1940’s. Hip and Butt pads, as well as weight gaining tablets were being sold across the entirety of the UK.

With the 60’s came a drastic change. Curvy was out and skinny was in, due to the likes of Twiggy.

With a second wave in the Women’s rights movement and the birth control pill being approved, women finally felt in control of their own bodies and free from the constraints and ideals of the 1950’s. However, it was just one ideal to another, completely going against what women were trying to do by breaking away from the standards of society at the time, proving that there was still an incredible amount of work to do in relation to the expectations put upon women relating to beauty standards and body image in the media. Twiggy represented the new trend of a less curvy, straight up and down body, which clearly marked a new era for women, leading women to rely on diets to have control over their figures.

Thin was never thin enough.

With the 70’s came the dance era; however, the same look still dominated the media for much of the decade, leaving an easy transition into the 80’s. Jane Fonda’s first workout video influenced women everywhere, leading to women now exercising to intentionally shape their bodies on a large scale, which was ideal timing for the modelling industry to introduce the super models.

Cue the 80’s. Models were seen everywhere with their tall, athletic physiques and became brands in their own rights. However, this didn’t last long as shortly into the 90’s, the skinny look was back in.

Due to heroin becoming more accessible and purer, this was a foothold with the middle class and wealthy, infiltrated through film culture – especially trainspotting and Pulp Fiction, suggesting a potential rebellion in society against the healthy ideals of the 80’s. The pale, skinny, emaciated look known as ‘heroin chic’ was led by Kate Moss, holding extreme amounts of push back as people didn’t like the glamourisation of drug culture. Cut to 1999 and heroin chic was out, creating a new ideal of flat, athletic stomachs, boobs and a tan to become the new craze of the 2000’s. Vogue dubbed supermodel Gisele Bundchen ‘the return of the sexy model’, influencing the new look in the media, to dominate the next decade as fitness became part of mainstream media once again.

By the time the 2010’s came around, a couple of provocative moments and a convenient family network allowed the Kardashians to bring back the curves and dominate the media. The booty craze has never been more celebrated than now, especially due to the influx of social media – shifting where people are getting their perspective of these new ideals from, opposed to forms of traditional media in the past decades.

Looking forward, ideals are appearing and disappearing faster than before. How we can predict what’s next? If our bodies are objectified as trends and ideals to dominate the media, will we ever be happy with ourselves if this phenomenon is constantly changing from one generation to the next?

Let's talk about the trendiness of flat stomachs and how they rarely go out of fashion.

Flat stomachs are often seen as an aspect of your body that compliments an outfit, besides the fact that traditionally fashion caters specifically to thin people; a vast number of outfits and trends are only viewed as fashionable when seen on people with flat stomachs.

Hear me out. When a thin celebrity wears an oversized jumper with high waited denim shorts, people perceive this to be effortless and fashionably casual, but when the same outfits are seen on fat people – they are considered ‘outdated’ or ‘unstylish’, perpetuating society’s internalised fatphobia and classism. The idealisation of thinness makes it virtually impossible for plus-size people to wear similar clothing and look ‘stylish’, especially in the media.

Why do we view thin as attractive?

Fatphobia, colonialism, anti-blackness, and capitalism all play in to why we internalise ‘thin’ to be attractive. ‘Chubby’ stomachs were considered a symbol of wealth and beauty during the renaissance period, which slowly changed over time due to white colonists pushing the concept of black people being ‘inherently fat’ because they ‘lacked self-control'. This further exemplified the notion of fatphobia as a means of fuelling racism and trying to justify slavery. Decades later, we have a diet industry worth nearly £200 billion and the idea that flat stomachs are superior to non-flat or fat stomachs, leaving us with the question, will having a flat stomach always be the ideal?

What we view in the media shapes our perspective of beauty, which allows us to internalise the concept that we need to look a certain way to have worth. Fashion has constricted women’s bodies for over 250 years, maintaining society’s obsession with looks and beauty, just for the next trend to become outdated after a few months. How we look, how we see ourselves, feeds into how much value we believe we hold, leading us to take unnecessary risks to fit this ‘ideal’ and becoming unhealthy mentally or physically. Often, it’s both.

Society will never end its search for the perfect woman, whether it be Kim Kardashian, Kate Moss or Emma Chamberlain. We all know that life is easier when you wear makeup, when you dress up, when you shave. Everyday rituals are subconsciously filtered through the desires of the all-powerful male gaze, rituals that we are expected to perform to be treated with the same respect that men are for just ‘showing up’. Society’s need for the perfect woman maintains unrealistic beauty standards, and toxic fitness and ‘health’ industries that profit from our insecurities.

It's about time that we say enough is enough.

When you stop deciding that the ideal body will bring you happiness, you give yourself the chance to find your worth and your true value in society. To answer that question, bodies are not trends, nor do they go out of fashion. Wear what you love and express yourself in whatever way makes you happiest. Just because much of the fitness industry doesn’t show how healthy bodies can still have stomach rolls, acne, and stretch marks; it doesn’t mean that they don’t. These are all features of a normal body, and no, this doesn’t make you any less of a person.

You hold so much power. Don’t let anyone take that away from you.

Written by Rosie Marsh

Artwork by Lucy McMillan & Hattie Nicholas