Because thinness was never about health

There was a brief window in time when curves were considered fashionable. Gains and strengths were celebrated, and the coveted ‘muscle mommy’ gym influencer was the aspirational archetype to be. And yet we have hard pivoted back to the 90’s and 2000’s heroin chic with ‘thin is in’. The BBL era has quietly dissolved for the pursuit of a slimmer silhouette. Rebranded under the soft glow of wellness as a Pilates princess, gym shark has been swapped for lululemon, and pre-workout for organic gut-friendly adaptogens.

The shift isn’t simply about aesthetics or exercise routines, but rather how bodies are rebranded into consumable archetypes. Less about health and more about the performance of identity through consumption. And it’s not that one is better than the other, but the cultural script rarely leaves space for that kind of duality.

Instead, we’re told to pick a lane. Soft or strong — never both, never in between. And that’s the real issue: the way womanhood is constantly sliced into trends, aesthetics, and archetypes that turn us into marketing categories and pit us against one another. This binary not only flattens identity and reduces multifaceted women to make them digestible, but it also denies fluidity and nuance outside of pre-set lanes.

And these aren’t just harmless trends. They’re cultural cycles loaded with racial, colonial, and economic baggage — repackaged again and again as self-discipline, wellness, and femininity. The last decade of body positivity and inclusive representation has done a lot to move the dial towards broader beauty standards.

But it was still rife with undertones of tokenism, cultural appropriation, and a healthy dose of male gaze. Curvy bodies were celebrated, but only in specific proportions. Perfectly slim and toned, think the likes of Beyonce or Kim Kardashian. This hourglass figure is more compliant with heteronormative racialized beauty ideals than true body diversity. Regardless, we saw the appreciation and commodification of natural body types outside of the white thin default.

With the shift in politics, we’re seeing similar conservative shifts in cultural ideals and gender norms in the ever-changing female beauty goalposts. Thinness is back, this time rebranded as wellness and being ‘that girl’. What was once the heroin chic off-duty model look has now been coined as Pilates princess. A restorative practice that will leave you toned with the promise of not adding the ‘bulk’ and ‘gains’ that were once so coveted. It fits perfectly into the schedule of “that girl” living the soft life — a polished, minimal-effort lifestyle rooted in privilege and wealth.

Now hear me out: the same way women of colour are scrutinised for their curvaceous bodies and ‘unhealthy’ eating habits now, echoes the way colonisers framed indigenous/non-white people as inherently gluttonous. In an attempt to paint people of colour in a negative light and assert their moral superiority, colonisers created a beauty mould that ethnicities built differently could never fit into. A calculated move to assert moral and physical superiority.

These colonial framings set the standard for beauty ideals. Ideals that became a way to impose hierarchy. By making white bodies the standard, colonial powers reinforced both cultural dominance and racial exclusion.

There are a multitude of reasons why the ‘thin is in’ narrative is so harmful for people of colour. It was the arrival of European colonialism that brought these new ideas. British and Western media valorised slender bodies and overtly framed indigenous beauty standards as primitive and excessive.

Historically, in countries from India to Nigeria and beyond, cultures prized fuller-figured women. Curves were associated with fertility, prosperity, and social status. Rounded stomachs, full hips, and soft bodies were worshipped. As colonial rule took hold so too did the introduction of the Body Mass Index (BMI) — a tool with little scientific rigour that fetishises white, male embodiment as the universal norm.

Tools like the BMI translated these radicalised beauty hierarches into medical ‘facts’, embedding bias into health standards, BMI entirely disregards muscle mass and fat distribution — factors heavily influenced by one’s ethnicity. South Asians, for example, may carry more body fat and harmful visceral fat at the same or lower BMI than their white counterparts. Meaning they may be classified as ‘healthy’ but are at a higher risk of developing health issues. Meanwhile, women — especially Black and Latino women — carry more subcutaneous fat around their hips and thighs, fat that is not metabolically dangerous. Certain ethnicities have heavier bones, others more lean muscle, and as a result lower body fat — all at the same BMI.

Size and BMI, factors that only entered the medical forum and linked to health in the 18th century, came during a period of dehumanization and racism, followed closely by the eugenics movement. And BMI? Entirely scientifically flawed to apply to the global population. It was never even developed for medical reasons.

Belgian mathematician Adolphe Quetelet developed the index in the 1830s. Quetelet was many things — including an astrologer and social theorist — but not a doctor or health expert. He was simply interested in studying human traits and used European men to gather data to define the ‘average [white] man’.

The poor old Belgian didn’t intend to use his index on a global population level, and definitely not by insurance companies after WW2. These companies aimed to quantify ‘fatness’ as a risk factor to determine your policy cost and coverage. It was physiologist Ancel Keys who introduced BMI to medical diagnoses.

A global index, used to rank and categorise people’s health on a black-and-white, one-dimensional scale — based on a study group of white men. Inherently racist and sexist. Even if we’ve debunked BMI, the ideologies and biases that fuelled the rise of this index still ring true. Demonstrating how societal structures and tools embed anf perpetuate systemic control over bodies.

Feminist scholar Susan Bordo explores in ‘Unbearable weight’, female bodies under capitalism are disciplined not always through overt control but through internalised self-surveillance. The relentless demand for women to perform self-correction and body work to fit the everchanging beauty standards. Creating a cycle of dissatisfaction benefiting the system not the person.

The rise of skinny tok and the thinspo being promoted is problematic on multiple levels. Women being ridiculed online, ironically by other women, for their size and shape, reinforces the notion that our value in society is tied to our physical beauty. And while the internet's dark corners have always harboured and amplified harmful ideas, this new trend is showing up on everyone's algorithm. Served up as a bowl of ice, with a side of verbal abuse.

“Oh, you need a treat? What are you? A dog?” – Skinnytok.

What’s dressed up as harmless internet banter is simply the latest iteration of an older script. Sounding eerily similar to past health purity movements that aimed to place themselves on higher moral grounds for being seemingly more disciplined. As if genetics, hormones, lifestyle, and ethnicity don’t play a major role in how our bodies are shaped. And there it is. The racist and classist undertones of beauty standards as white.

Because thinness was never about health.

If thinness were about health, then we wouldn’t be seeing the medicalisation of cosmetic thinness. Toxic diet culture, Ozempic, and body-altering surgeries, all with net negative impacts, don’t exactly scream health to me. Instead, it indicates class-based privilege and access to body modification.

Unless you’ve got bottomless pockets — like Oprah Winfrey, Kelly Clarkson, and more — you can’t just walk out within months with entirely different bodies. Or access plastic surgeons and other magic wielders who manage to melt off all the curves in exchange for Pilates arms and sculpted abs, as seen with the members of the Kardashians.

Raising the idea, are these really ‘health’ tools or aesthetic and lifestyle symbols?

Thinness operates as a social currency and class symbol, especially for women. Economist David Lempert states that fat stigma has intensified in recent decades despite a rise in obesity — making thinness even more rare and valued, thus increasing its economic premium.

It goes as far as the economics of thinness, where a study found a correlation between body weight and financial prosperity. While these biases are multifactorial, it cannot be denied that women’s appearance — including weight — can exacerbate existing gender and racial inequalities. There is also a reverse causality in play, considering wealth enables access to healthier food, healthcare, wellness resources - all of which impact one's ability to maintain the ‘ideal’ body.

Creating a feedback loop where being thin not only becomes a marker of discipline, but of class and worthiness — reinforcing structural and socio-economic hierarchies. Female bodies ideals todays are the product of colonial, racial, economic, and cultural forces, not neutral aesthetics. Commodified and disciplined, thinness is framed as moral and economic capital.

But we can reclaim control over our bodies by focusing on personal health, movement, and pleasure over externally imposed standards. Challenging tokenism and actively amplifying representation of women whose bodies exist outside mainstream norms. Tuning into how our body feels rather than how it looks to others. Only then can we value our bodies as opposed to ‘fixing’ them or moulding ourselves into someone else’s ideal.