A few weeks ago, a new trend started to become popular on social media, which says that “being skinny is the outfit.” But if we think about it more deeply, thinness has always been the best calling card that society has imposed on us. For decades it has remained one of the main beauty ideals for women.
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The vast majority of us, especially those of us who are Latina, grew up hearing and learning that we had to be skinny, but with curves in the right places, because even a thin body could be considered unattractive if it did not meet that idea of how the female body should look. An example is the well-remembered “90-60-90,” which referred to the measurements considered ideal for a woman.
And that ideal has mutated into different versions. Over the years we have seen how very thin bodies have become fashionable, others thin but with curves in specific places, fit and toned bodies, and today we see how a much more extreme thinness is gaining strength.
New trends have arrived to change certain characteristics of that body considered “perfect,” but the truth is that we still feel that the closer we get to it, the prettier, more attractive, disciplined, and even healthier we will be.
The tools available to try to achieve that goal have also changed. Today we have many more possibilities from medicine to intervene in our bodies and get closer to that aesthetic ideal. It is no longer just about plastic surgeries. Today there is greater access to weight loss medications and bariatric surgeries, while extreme diets are increasingly available. An industry that has been making money for decades from our body dissatisfaction now has many more tools to sell us the possibility of changing our bodies, while we see an increase in eating disorders.
Every time we talk about these standards, an argument that is repeated quite often appears: “But skinny women also get comments about their bodies.” And yes, of course that happens. Julieta, a patient who agreed to share her testimony for this column, experienced it for much of her life and told me how those comments changed as her body changed.
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“Genetically, I was very thin for many years of my adolescence and I received comments about my body, especially because I didn’t have the curves that have historically been considered feminine and attractive. Being asked if you eat, if you are sick, or being told that you have to ‘put on some weight because there’s nothing to grab onto,’ was very hurtful and affected my self-esteem a lot. Everything changed at 32 when I had my first daughter. Over the years I gained more than 20 kilos and many things changed. Larger sizes from some retail stores stopped fitting me and the comments about my weight began. Some came from strangers and others, probably the ones that hurt me the most, from my own family. That’s when I understood, from a very personal place, that although comments about my appearance also existed when I was very thin, no one associated that body with laziness, lack of control, or lack of discipline, nor did they assume I didn’t take care of myself, as happened when I gained weight.”
A very thin woman can receive mockery and hurtful comments, but these occur in a different social context. Fatness has been associated for decades with laziness, lack of control, lack of willpower, or supposed neglect of one’s own health. We look at a fat body and believe we know how that person eats, how much they move, how much they care about their health, and even how disciplined they are, even though we know absolutely nothing about their life. Recognizing the harm caused by comments toward very thin bodies does not mean equating both experiences or ignoring the moral burden that we have historically placed on fatness.
A trend alone does not cause an eating disorder, but we have been exposed for years to images, comments, advertising, and content that show us over and over which bodies are considered beautiful, which can wear certain clothes, and which seem to always need to change something. And this does not only affect girls, teenagers, or women in their 20s. We continue to receive these messages at 30, 40, 50, or 70, because the pressure to meet certain aesthetic standards does not disappear when we stop being young.
That is why I find the phrase “being skinny is the outfit” terribly violent. An outfit can be chosen and then put away in the closet when it goes out of fashion, but a body does not work that way. In this case, we are not even talking about a fashion that appeared suddenly. Thinness has been established as an ideal for decades and what we do every so often is change its shape, add or remove curves and muscles, modify how thin that body must be, and find new ways to try to achieve it. Talking about body diversity loses much meaning if we continue choosing one type of body over others and teaching ourselves that we should do everything possible to look like it.
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