I’ve noticed lately that there’s something familiar about the way bodies, food, and health are being talked about again. Praise for weight loss is exceptionally loud, talk of peptides and GLPs is very popular, and extreme thinness is being framed as healthy and a symbol of control. The comeback of what’s called “2000s skinny” is really a cultural regression that moralizes unhealthiness and thinness and subconsciously teaches people that being smaller is ideal.
What Is “2000s skinny”?
I want to be clear in saying that I am not talking about naturally thin bodies. You can often clearly tell the difference between a malnourished thin body and a healthy, naturally thin body. “2000s skinny” is an ideal, an ideal that is heavily praised due to how unattainable it is, or how unattainable it should be. Extreme thinness is the standard here, and typically, people do an immense amount of harm to themselves to achieve this thinness. Heroin, cocaine, GLPs, and various other detrimental methods are used just to reach a smaller ideal.
This thinness is enforced, not accidental. Celebrities who achieve such an ideal (because they have money for what is needed to achieve it…), influence young fans. Diet culture is very popularized, and people are often deemed “less than” if they choose not to participate in some sort of diet. People online push a harmful rhetoric on heavier bodies, even bodies that are healthy. Any excess weight is deemed as a lack of control, unhealthiness, and undesirable. All of this is not true when you look at a greater scale.
Historical Impact
The ideal of the early 2000s was not harmless. Media during this time, a lot like how it is now, centered extreme thinness as the standard of health and beauty. Society framed minor and natural weight fluctuations as failures, and eating disorders were glorified. Especially on medias like Tumblr and Twitter, the aesthetic of an eating disorder was extremely admirable. Thinness during this time was not only preferred, but it was rewarded and praised.
The consequences of these ideals were detrimental, and measurable. Rates of disordered eating and body insecurity raised, especially among young women and minors. These people didn’t even have a sense of self, yet they were still striving for something which they believed defined them. The exposure to and pressure from “ideal” bodies taught young women many harmful behaviors, including body checking, counting calories, cutting out food groups, excessive exercise, and fasting excessively.
There were not only physical consequences, by mental ones as well. The 2000s ideal came with shame, guilt, comparison, and an overall belief that bodies were to be shaped, and not lived in. These patterns follow people for a very long time. They cannot just be unlearned.
This history matters because these mindsets didn’t just magically disappear, which is why it’s resurfacing now. We see that societies body standard has harmed us before. Its return isn’t just nostalgic, but it is also a return of a mindset that teaches people to distrust their body, and harm it.
Why and Who?
Nostalgia cycles in fashion. Along with the mindset coming back, you also notice many of the clothing trends in the 2000s are coming back as well. Low rise fitted zip ups, fold over leggings, the list goes on.
Not only this, but medicine has improved greatly. GLPs like Ozempic are becoming more recognized, widespread, and even normalized. Medicalized weight loss is becoming casual conversation with how wide it has developed. On top of that, social media algorithms reward weight loss, and heavily criticize weight gain. Wellness culture, especially online, is reframing restriction as “health” and control. In all reality, it is a lack of control.
Not everyone is affected equally by this culture. This culture is mostly online, which aids in making adolescents and young women most impacted (women are also most critiqued for their bodies, which adds to it). Individuals recovering from a past eating disorder also face immense consequences from this shift. A reappearance of eating disorder culture and weight loss praise can easily trigger a relapse, as recovery is an extremely fragile place.
Most importantly, this return harms anyone whose body changes with time. Aging, stress, and illness (among many other things) naturally alter bodies, and in a society that deems change as failure, this can be detrimental. People begin to believe they need to fix their body, when nothing is truly wrong.
The Cultural Consequences
The consequences of this “2000s skinny” culture are not only internal. Society and culture as a whole suffer from it.
This shift makes fashion exclusionary again. Trends gear towards a specific body shape, and when someone deviates from that, they are ridiculed. This subtly suggests that certain body types must change (or fix themselves) to participate. Think Victoria Secret fashion shows, Kate Moss, etc. Instead of fashion adapting to bodies, bodies are pressured to adapt to fashion. This reinforces the idea that worth is conditional.
I’ve already spoken a great amount about the moral costs of thin culture. I want to add here that the mindset that praises self-control, demonizes hunger, and deems rest as failure results in a culture that equates shrinking with righteousness.
The most damaging cultural consequence may be the destruction of the societal progress made by body-positivity and body-neutrality movements. The resurfacing of 2000s skinniness threatens the space made by these movements. It replaces it with a familiar and hurtful way of life. In this way of life, only certain human bodies are celebrated and praised.
Cultural consequences shape values. When extreme thinness becomes fashionable again, it teaches society who is and who isn’t allowed to exist and take up space.
Deny The Shift: Choose Health
As this shift in society keeps pushing, I urge you to approach it with awareness and choice. Refuse to treat bodies as trends, even when culture insists on it.
Question what is being framed as “health” or “discipline”, and recognize what is really happening: restriction and abuse. Disengage from content that associates worth with weight loss. Seek out voices that represent all of society, not just the small. On a bigger scale, it’s important to support representation that relies on more than simply thinness. Speak carefully about bodies, weight loss, and food, especially if it is not your own. And especially if it is your own.
The choices that we collectively make helps shape our culture, in a healthy and positive (or neutral) way.
Finally, it is important to note that none of this means rejecting thin bodies. It’s about rejecting a system that gives value based on size. Choosing to take up space is a powerful act, of which I encourage.
Closing
We aren’t perfect. I myself have fallen into the pipeline of thinness, but I myself am also eating a burrito bowl while writing this.
The return of 2000s skinny is not harmless, and this moment asks us to be careful. There is nothing radical about wanting to exist for more than making yourself smaller. It is so immensely important to remember that bodies are meant to live, change, and age. Aging is a beautiful and wonderful thing (I could write a whole other post about how aging is criminalized…). Refusal to give in and participate in these trends is not weakness, it’s love and care.
Remembering the history of eating disorder culture will give us a choice: repeat it or resist it.
With love, Jade.
Jaded 
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