Did 00s beauty standards leave millennial women with lasting body image issues

[ChocolateSqueezyyogurts]

I turned 13 just before the millennium so am a typical millennial. I have been thinking about how I have struggled with body image issues all of my adult life and was wondering how many other women my age have experienced the same. We grew up in a time when it was "fashionable" to be thin. Indy Sleaze, Kate Moss' Topshop range, reality TV showing people like Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. It was like the thinner you were the more attractive and healthy you were, and anybody who wasn't skinny was considered fat. Im 40 this year and I cant remember a time I havent been trying to loose weight despite being between a size 8-12 throughout my adult years. Im sure this has been an issue for other generations but I think that body positively is much more of a thing for teenagers/young women now. How much did the 00's fuck up our attitudes towards weight?

Teenagers/young women today go to the gym to get "snatched" - we never did at that age. We played sport.

They also get injectables and fillers before they're even 30.

Yes.
I have a very bad relationship with my body. I'm alot kinder to myself now, but the teens, twenties and early thirties were ugly.

Yes, but it's far worse for younger ones, as we avoided social media until we were older.
I suppose every age had it, but at least with the fifties hourglass etc, they didn't have surgery which some poor people have felt pressured into to have the "right" shape.

Nicole Ritchie in those days would pose with her legs slightly apart so as to look slimmer. I remember reading that once. Slim still maybe but she wasn't 'skinny' back then.
Indie sleaze? Beth Ditto anyone?

I'd lay more blame on all the makeover movies and shows like friends (fat Monica?), ally McBeal (totally had an eating disorder)...

Nicole Richie was well known for having an eating disorder and became very unwell, at one point she was practically a skeleton.

I grew up then and my only lasting issue is that I overplucked my caterpillar monobrow so much from 11 that they have never grown back properly and to this day I have to draw around patches of hair. I tried to sort them with microblading a few years back but couldn’t go through with it in the end after seeing someone who ended up with two uneven brows! 😱 I actually think people today get a more toxic message as the influencers have so much work done at a young age! I was looking more at Melissa Joan Hart and Alyson Hannigan than Nicole Ritchie or Kate Moss though.

I've rewatched quite a few 00s TV shows recently- Royle Family, Shameless, Bad Girls, Life Begins, Fat Friends and its struck me just how many references there are to being fat/ name calling aimed at women who are perfectly normal sizes.

Also, the 'fat' characters just aren't (Martine McCutcheon in Love Actually is the epitome of this!)

I remember when the Kardashians came on the scene in 2008 and thinking how great that Kim had this lovely curvy figure and embraced it. It was the exact opposite of the skinny bodies that had prevailed in the previous decade and she was shamed for her curves but it was the start of the new era.

I was literally thinking this yesterday. Having had three kids over the course of the last decade, I’ve finally lost weight and had the time to tone up, so that I’m nearly back to early 20s figure again (am the same age as you OP). It’s made me realise that I’ve spent the vast majority of my adult life being unhappy with my body, avoiding mirrors, photos etc. I’m actually really sad about it, because that’s the best (most able / healthiest) time for my body over and I’ve never been able to appreciate it properly. Even now I’m pretty slim, and objectively I think I look good, I can’t stop myself scrutinising for every flaw, which is basically what those early 00s magazines did. I hope my daughters love and appreciate their bodies more than me.

What does to get "snatched" mean?

It’s been the same for all generations op. How many older women have been on a diet all their lives and have terrible eating habits . Twiggy was the icon of the 60s, she was very slim indeed, her name says it all, centuries ago women were strapped into corsets to make them look slimmer, their waists look tiny.

Yes we went through a phase of body positivity,, but the reality was no one wants to be fat, or very few, that was more about acceptance, as losing weight was impossible for so many, and now medicine has moved on, and weight loss drugs mean we don’t have to be fat, it is no longer impossible, and so we are seeing obesity reverse, people only want to accept it when they can’t do anything about it.

the difference now is men are also subjected to it, so many young men building muscle, waxing, grooming, fake tanning, getting Botox etc,

being a healthy weight is linked to conventional attractiveness in most cultures with a very few exceptions globally , it is linked to fertility and health, so it’s instinctive.

so ir wasn’t the period you grew up in, I am in my fifties and faced the same pressures, as did my mother and grandmothers.

i struggled mid 90s to mid 00s , I think because there was only so much I could do to improve my appearance and lived in fear of being photographed. A lot more now is about illusion of a certain look rather than achieving it. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been shocked at someone seeing them in RL then their SM 😂
I think generally as well as filters that all the make up secrets were let out (contouring etc) and now it’s easier to make yourself look different. All I had as a teen was achieving the right weight and so many of my friends also had eating disorders .

I think it was ever thus, to be honest. I've always been particularly shocked by the older women who are obsessed with weight. I'm a bit older than you, but remember my grandmother telling me at 13 to be careful as I was putting on weight.
I pop round to my elderly neighbour for a cup of tea occasionally (she's in her 90s) and her favourite past time is watching the women who walk past her window and saying things like "ooh she's really been piling on the pounds". It's really sad.

I remember the fat shaming articles in some magazines too. Calling Mariah Carey big and she really wasn’t !

Please tell me you’re not suggesting Nicole Richie wasn’t skinny in the noughties

OP I agree but i do think in a way it’s no worse than times before or after. In the 90s we had supermodels/ “heroin chic” in the 80s they had weight watchers and slimfast.

diabolical lies do a brilliant podcast about this where they look at eating disorders throughout time and it’s thought that Victorian fainting disease etc would’ve been anorexia.

😂 theres absolutely nothing natural or achievable for the average woman about KK's figure.

Yes I agree, at the moment I notice a total epidemic with boomer generation women with disordered eating. My 74 year old MIl is one.

My boomer parents are obsessed with my weight. Im a size 10

This, my Dd went to school with "girls" I don't recognise! Their faces are pumped and filled, i don't think today's standards are any healthier tbh

I definitely grew up with the idea that only thin can be attractive. This mindset has never really left me.

My 20 something nieces seem to have a healthier outlook - they’re slim but strong, they all lift weights and know so much more about nutrition than we did at their age. They all describe themselves as ‘crunchy’ 🙄

Ageing seems to be anathema to some of them. I know someone that started Botox at 23.

I agree with this, being strong and healthy is now the drive for the youth of today rather than being skinny, skinny is achievable with medication. Strong is something you need to work at. Strong is aspirational. Having a lean defined toned body, is rhe ultimate, it is certainly not Kim Kardashian for most,

they drink less, workout more, eat healthier but conversely have no concern with rhe likes of Botox.

No… it was our mothers.

Nah, credit is due to J Lo.
J Lo brought the hourglass figure into the mainstream a few years earlier and the flack she got was truly insane, the Kardashians followed suit but Jennifer Lopez was the pioneer.

Absoltely and the Kardashian’s relied on surgery.

ironically I've been recommended someone on instagram who is making videos on this exact topic 'retraining my millennial brain,' and Buffy and Sabrina were two of the shows she referenced. e.g. how Amber Benson was seen as the 'big one' on Buffy but at the time she weighed less than 8 stone, it was only that SMG, AH etc were unhealthily tiny.

But yeah, while I agree that it's something that has impacted every generation and we weren't the only ones, it is shocking to look back at some of the examples. Another one the instagram poster I mentioned above referenced was Jessica Simpson when she did that concert and was horrendously slagged off.
When you look at some of the fat-shaming that was published in mainstream magazines it's absolutely horrendous.

I think it's the juxtaposition of it not being (or at least not feeling) that long ago (to us, to Gen Z the early 2000s is back when dinosaurs roamed the earth) that makes it feel so shocking.