Women are willing to take extreme measures upon themselves to be beautiful. While it seems that there is always a new standard of beauty to meet, one that has remained catastrophic to young women for over 100 years in the Western Hemisphere has been the desire to be skinny.
Through exposure to thin movie stars on television and models that are dangerously thin in magazines, society has driven the nail into consumers’ minds that “skinny is pretty.”
“You see a lot of skinny models with blond hair and blue eyes that are super tan, and I think that growing up as a little girl, you always aspire to be like these models. So if you’re not built the same way or have the same structure as these models, it takes a good mental toll on you, because you think you’re never going to be like them,” Sara Massella ‘28 said.
History of “Skinny”
According to Smithsonian Magazine, prior to the 1920s, a fuller figure was actually associated with wealth, health and status. But the Roaring Twenties brought the trend of a skinnier figure, which became more desirable with the rise of the “flapper.”
Thin beauty ideals peaked in the 1990s and early 2000s. Women in the media such as actresses and models were being portrayed as even slimmer than previously seen, dominating television screens and magazine covers.
Female figures of the media such as Kate Moss and Jodie Kidd were the gold standard of “heroin chic” and the “waif” look, with thin silhouettes and frames. Kate Moss even once said in 2009 that “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels,” promoting dieting among young and impressionable fans.
Dieting and starvation was promoted on TV screens and women’s bodies themselves. Despite the fact that many of these women looked sick or were dangerously thin, they were deemed to be the most beautiful women in the world.
With so much exposure to the extreme beaters standard, both women and young girls consumed these images and internalized them, engaging in any practice available to them to achieve an unrealistic standard of skinny. In the 90s and early 2000s. According to the National Library of Medicine, “eating disorder related hospitalizations increased 18 percent from 1999–2000 to 2005–2006.”
Instead of labeling extreme dieting as unhealthy, large companies and the media portrayed unhealthy figures as the standard of beauty, one that every woman should strive to meet. And being beautiful was so dire to women that they were willing to starve themselves to achieve it.
“Society pressures women to look a certain way. It’s this constant need to want to fit in and to fit the societal standard of what beauty is, because I think women are often equated to how they look, and they are treated based on how they look, and I think that’s what pushes women to go to the extreme,” Madi Baker ‘26 said.
According to Science Direct, eating disorders were a growing epidemic in the 90s, with studies indicating that an increasing number of women were feeling dissatisfaction with their bodies and appearance. And while eating disorders are not exclusive to women, according to the National Eating Disorders Association, “the overall lifetime prevalence of eating disorders is estimated to be 8.60% among females and 4.07% among males.”
“Skinny” Persisting Today
Eating disorders still persist in young girls today despite modern campaigns and messages of body positivity. While there have been strides made in the right direction, young women increasingly experience low self-esteem when it comes to their appearance and weight.
According to the Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, “in the United States, as many as 10 in 100 young women suffer from an eating disorder. Disordered eating related to stress, poor nutritional habits, and food fads are relatively common problems for youth.”
While there has been advocacy in body positivity campaigns like The Dove Self Esteem Project, the slim body standard is overwhelmingly present in modern media. A glance at new movie trailers and magazine covers still portrays an unrealistic expectation of physical beauty.
Young girls are still consuming images of extremely skinny women and internalizing them, looking down at their phones with the insecurity that they will never measure up to society’s body standards. As a result, they are disregarding their health and happiness in the process of trying to attain this unhealthy standard.
“I feel like everybody is beautiful and they just need to realize that. If they think there’s something they need to change about themselves and they’re just doing it to please those around them or live up to a specific standard, it’s not worth it. I think that beauty comes from the inside, so they should just try to do whatever makes them happy and not focus just on external looks,” Eveline Lauinger ‘27 said.
