Bodies Are Not Trends

Trigger Warning: This blog mentions sensitive topics such as body image, disordered eating, and sexual assault. 

“I could change up my body and change up my face, I could try every lipstick in every shade. But I’d always feel the same. Cause pretty isn’t pretty enough anyway.” - Pretty Isn’t Pretty by Olivia Rodrigo

For as long as I can remember, a narrative was pushed that I should always care about the way my body looks. Just like every decade has its fashion trends, it has its body image trends too. I was born in the early 2000s, so I grew up with “thin being in.” The trend of low-rise jeans and baby tees also gave birth to terms like “the muffin top” and diet commercials rampaged my television telling me to eat a Yoplait Light so I could wear an “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini.” All I wanted to do was watch Hannah Montanna.

When I entered middle school in 2016, I was surprised to see that the standard had changed. Suddenly everyone cared about having a large butt and thick thighs. The commercials and tabloids I consumed in the early 2000s conditioned me to expect everyone to believe that curves were disgusting. However, the 13-year-old boys in my school legitimately had Instagram models in thongs as their phone wallpaper. I was shocked that the traits I had always been taught to hate about myself turned out to be what made me beautiful at that given time. The new faces of beauty during this time were Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian. A Brazilian butt lift and lip filler had become the perfect recipe for what made a woman beautiful. I found it a bit strange that the Kardashians had coined the “slim thick figure” when numerous black women were shamed for having “thicker bodies” for decades. It seemed like suddenly when that body appeared on a different race, society started to recognize its beauty. 

History only repeats itself as this is not the first time that white women have exploited the bodies of black women as the “new trendy thing.” In the early 19th century, Khoekhoe woman, Saartjie Baartman (also referred to as Sara, Sarah, and Saartje) was taken from Africa to Europe after an English doctor had become fascinated by her body. Baartman carried a lot of weight in her buttocks as it’s been speculated that she had a condition called steatopygia. The doctor convinced Baartman to sign a contract that would seemingly send her to Europe as an indentured servant. However, Baartman was unable to read. Therefore, she was unaware that the terms of the contract were false and that she would become enslaved for the rest of her life. Baartman was forced to wear very little clothing and was put on display for paying audiences. In 1814 she had even been sold to a French man named S. Réaux who allowed audience members to sexually assault Baartman. After Baartman died at the young age of 26, she still could not rest peacefully. Her body had been kept in a museum in France for people to continue to gawk at her body. It was not until 2002– yes, 2002!– that the museum agreed to have her body buried in her home country.

Photo of Saartjie Baartman, Science Photo Library.

Only a few decades after Baartman’s death, the iconic Bustle Dress of the Victorian era had become extremely popular. Dr. Anne Mastamet-Mason, a Ph.D. recipient from the Department of Fashion Design at Tshwane University of Technology, discusses the comparison of Baartman’s Body and the Bustle Dress in her research paper, “The Saartjie Baartman’s Body Shape versus the Victorian Dress: The Untold African Treasures.” The Bustle dress included a tight corset which created the illusion of a larger bust and slim waist, and an exaggerated hip line that created the illusion of a protruding buttock. Charles Matthews, a popular actor during this era wrote the following in his memoir, “In those days, when bustles were not, [Baartman] was a curiosity, for English ladies wore no shape but what nature gave and insisted upon.” He also says, “Saartjie Baartman’s body filled ambiguous position of what was naturally unnatural.” In an era named after Queen Victoria, the most prominent white woman of this time, numerous white women could be seen wearing the same silhouette that caused Sajjarie Baartman to be treated like a circus animal.

Throughout humanity, we can look at any specific era and pinpoint what women were expected to look like. It’s as if every ten years a nameless figure would spin a wheel every ten years to decide whatever the new standard was. In the 1950s everyone wanted to look like Marilyn Monroe. Her curvy body had been envied by many as it was seen as “womanly.” Advertisements were even put in newspapers with different methods on how women could gain weight. A direct antithetical of the Yoplait ads from the early 2000s. Just ten years later in the 1960s, curves had suddenly become undesirable and androgyny was all the rage. This article from Messenger provides a timeline of different beauty standards throughout the Century. It is clear to see how the definition of beauty is everchanging. How can a woman be expected to naturally change her entire body composition in just ten years to look beautiful? 

The Kardashians have seemed to effortlessly answer this question in the present day. It was only a few years ago when we saw the Kardashians proudly profiting off their “thick” bodies. Kim Kardashian –an allegedly unnaturally curvy woman– admittedly lost 16 pounds in three weeks to fit into Marilyn Monroe’s– a woman who was famous for her natural curves– old dress for the 2022 Met Gala. Ever since then, we have seen a shift in how the Kardashians look. Khloe Kardashian, Kim Kardashian, and Kylie Jenner have all been speculated to have traded their bootylicious bodies for a slimmer figure. They are not the only ones as several celebrities have actually admitted to taking Ozempic, a prescription drug meant for type-2 diabetics to help lower blood sugar by releasing insulin in the body that can also result in weight loss. After losing 42 pounds on the medication, Sharon Osburne said, “I didn’t actually want to go this thin, but it just happened and I’ll probably put it all on again soon.” 

So what happens to the general population who can’t afford to change their body like the seasons? People forget that we’re normal people. Our bodies are not of date clothes we can just donate to Goodwill. Besides the fact that a Brazilian butt lift can cost tens of thousands, it is also a life-risking procedure. Last year in the New York Post, a woman named Tina opened up about regretting the Brazillian Butt Lift she spent $12,000 for in 2017. She decided to spend a whopping $25,000 to have the procedure reversed. I will admit that it is refreshing to see a look of unnatural plastic surgery fizzle out as it is almost always so unattainable. However, the trade-off is not that much more out of reach, especially when people who want to lose an extra 10 pounds are taking Ozempic away from diabetics who need the medication. It is especially dangerous as the medication has not been FDA-approved as a weight loss drug. Therefore it is unsure to determine what long-term side effects the drug may entail. 

Although beauty standards are not a new concept, it is almost dystopian to see how social media, new medications, and even technology can expand the lengths that women can go to change themselves to fit a standard. There are TikTok filters to determine whether you're bunny, deer, cat, or fox pretty…whatever the hell that means. I also constantly see TikTok’s of women who refuse to post their faces without the “Bold Glamour” filter which in my opinion resembles an uncanny valley look. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if the world started to expect women to look like robots. 

As a woman, I am simply just exhausted. I am tired of being told I need to be taking the cool new supplement of the month. I am tired of being hypersexualized for having curves one minute and then being told I need to shrink myself the next one. More people should realize that our differences are what makes us beautiful. What is the point if everyone looks the same because of a made-up standard we’re expected to follow? I spent so much of my life envying a body that is the exact opposite of mine, but I have now learned that just because two things are different does not make one correct and the other incorrect. As long as you are happy and feel like the best version of yourself then the rest of the world should not matter. In a society where there is always going to be some standard that you aren’t meeting, what more can you really do? If we stop placing so much value on beauty then maybe we can abolish the concept of beauty standards altogether.