Why do we find ourselves once again talking about thinness

I never wanted to be medium sized. It was inconceivable for me to give in to a different body type than my friends who comfortably fit into a size 38 or 40. And it did not matter that this corresponded to reality, because the real battle was in my head, in the idea that an extra centimetre was an obstacle to being "beautiful". I hated my Mediterranean hips and round face. I always wished I had skinny legs, hollow cheeks, a concave belly and protruding bones. I suffered from not being as petite as Milla Jovovich, Kate Moss and the other girls on the covers of the magazines I eagerly devoured. I envied them and my classmates who were the same size. In my eyes as a teenager who had grown up in the era of heroin chic, with low waists, tight miniskirts and tops that exposed the belly, being thin was much more than a licence to fall into the category of "cool kids" It brought with it a kind of immediacy, ease and light-heartedness. Skinny girls could wear anything. When summer came, all you needed was a simple tank top and a pair of shorts and you were perfect and ready to conquer the world; whereas I had to study for hours in front of the mirror, wearing dresses and trousers on top of each other and suffocating in the heat and insecurity. And if someone had told me the unassailable truth that no body is wrong, ugly or undesirable, I would never have believed them, or at least I would never have believed that such a simple yet revolutionary idea could be applied to my image in the mirror. The realisation that a person is more than the size he or she wears was not enough to free me from the aspirational notion of perfection that society imposed on me and that I, like many others, had internalised so much that it limited my choices in style and beyond. Body and weight are complicated because they touch on subjective dynamics. This is my story, but it's not too different from the experiences of many others because, as Jia Tolentino writes in her book Trick Mirror, "the psychological parasite of the ideal woman has evolved to survive in an ecosystem that pretends to resist it," body positivity and feminism "have not eradicated the tyranny of the ideal woman, but rather exacerbated and complicated it."

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Un post condiviso da Marta Blue (@marta_blue)

The truth we are afraid to say out loud? Thinness offers people privilege, and most of us have accepted that perfection only exists in a thin body. We would like to change this, we make long and often rhetorical proclamations on the subject, but the roots of this collective illusion that beauty is a one-size-fits-all are so deep that they resist any attempt to eradicate them. This is also confirmed by a recent article in the Economist. For populations in advanced countries, and especially for women, there is a strong correlation between income and weight, and several studies have found that overweight or obese women earn less than their thinner counterparts. At the latest fashion shows, brands seem to have dropped plus-size models from their castings, the Kardashians are getting skinnier, the misuse of Ozempic as a slimming agent is spreading, and although we praise the body-positivity beauty of celebrities like Ashley Graham and Lizzo on Instagram, diet culture is more alive than ever.

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Un post condiviso da Michaela Stark (@michaelastark)

Summer is fuelling the slimming craze. The higher the temperatures rise, the more we negotiate with our bodies. We like to remind others and ourselves that different bodies have their justification, but then every season we find ourselves trapped in a vicious cycle that we can not get out of and that also creates business frustration. The idea that beauty and small size are synonymous is so ingrained socially and culturally that we continue to buy firming creams, undergo restrictive diets and even read and write articles on the subject. We are both victims and perpetrators of ourselves. We keep wondering if there is an elixir that will make us look like Bella Hadid, like the Gabriette after losing weight, and we believe that every anti-cellulite remedy, every draining bandage or every miraculous peeling advertises a body worthy of passing the swimming costume test. Some more, some less, every positive or negative comment about our curves or lack thereof touches us, leaves traces and determines our behaviour and decisions. How can we emancipate ourselves from these toxic mechanisms? Some have figured it out, but most of us struggle to focus on truths and alternative solutions.

Below are some readings that can help you shed light on the subject.