Words: Chelsea Daniel (She/they)
The Western woman, by returning to skinniness, is turning away as the West exploits people inside and out. Like every time before, the women are moving inside and getting too tired to speak up because they want to be with the skinny girls.
Thin is in.
Thin is in with the magazines that, since 2024, have asked themselves, ‘Is skinny back?’, ultimately manufacturing consent for skinny to be back. Thinness is a reflection of a societal shock; a body ideal that uses women as the culture’s ideological representative to separate itself from the “others”. In Illness as a Metaphor, Susan Sontag talks about the history of appearing sickly thin gaining appeal because it became a ‘mark of distinction, of breeding’. Little has changed – thin became in with the elite celebrity class, a class performance for others to follow. In a literal sense, Ozempic was able to be bought by the elite for weight loss, causing a shortage for people reliant on the drug for health-related purposes. 2025 fashion weeks were followed by reports about the lack of body diversity, with fashion designer Nan Li saying to BBC, ‘Paris celebrates elitism, and elitism means skinny and white.’
Thinness is tiring. Growing up dancing, I always knew that to show grace, I had to look a certain way. I learned fairly early on that to strive for that look, I couldn’t dance as well. I couldn’t run, read, or make jokes. I saw what thinness did to the smart girls in school, the girls who played football, or the dying older women in my family, whose bright side to their health decline was that at least they were losing weight.
When thinness is in, women’s culture exists in private. This is what Angela McRobbie referred to as a “bedroom culture” – girls are socialised to exist in the domestic sphere, so most female-dominated subcultures were rooted in consumer culture. McRobbie doesn’t mention thinness directly, but it is hard to not see the link of being too tired to go outside and buying into the trends around you.
Think of the 40s “pin-up girls” and the white 50s housewives. These women were to be seen and not heard. Historically, when women engage with the physical, from the re-purposed military wear of the 1960s anti-Vietnam protests to the 1990s Riot Grrrls, they can do so in public. It is in protest to be heard. It was only then that a cultural revolution could begin, and women could progress. As McRobbie said, girls going outside was a risk in post-war Britain. Therefore, in order for women to go outside, they had to have energy to take on the risk. If women consume in the bedroom, what progress can really be made when the rest of the world can’t see it?
When thin is in and women move inside, half of the West’s population becomes distracted from what is happening to the world around them. The thin woman becomes the elite’s symbol as she’s too tired to fight back. When the vibrating skinny belt was taking 50s housewives by storm, making an appearance in I Love Lucy (1951-57), Britain’s long-term Conservative government oversaw the Suez Crisis with France and Israel. Whilst Fonda’s videos made sayings like ‘no pain, no gain’ and ‘feel the burn’ common among average middle-class households, Thatcher was introducing the 1984 Trade Unions Act. Skinniness became a welcome distraction from the war on the global working class, affecting everyone, including the West’s “ideal” women.
As the world reckons with mass-disabling events, from the impact of Covid-19 to the genocides in Gaza and Sudan, all the ideal Western women seem to think about, and act on, is thinness. It is hard not to scream when video after video shows the starving bodies of famine victims followed by videos of girls, in the safety of their homes, body-checking for views.
Self-described “anti-beauty” writer Jessica de Fino argues in her newsletter that sickly thinness is a ‘[f]ull submission to a culturally conditioned-ideal.’ The women, from the “pilates princesses” to the chronically online, are submitting. The Western woman, by returning to skinniness, is turning away as the West exploits people inside and out. Like every time before, the women are moving inside and getting too tired to speak up because they want to be with the skinny girls.
The revolution, culturally and politically, is not just someone’s daily decisions. However, we can only move the culture forward if we have enough energy to step outside and shout.
