Why is my generation so obsessed with being skinny?

Times

2 days ago

I recently posted a picture of myself on social media, with one intention, but the outcome was unexpected. I put up a video on my Instagram of myself in the gym, wearing a sports bra and leggings and doing some physio exercises I'd been set in order to recover from a painful back injury. The caption read something like, 'Look, I can touch my toes again!', as I slowly bent forward with my arms outstretched towards the ground. I felt a sense of achievement, so why did the response send me into a complete spiral?
'You look incredible!', 'Skinny minny!', 'ABS!'. A flurry of messages about how good I was looking filled up my DMs. Messages that would have usually made me feel so happy, just made me cry. I couldn't understand why everyone thought I looked so good on the outside, when actually I was in the worst state I'd ever been in, physically and emotionally.
It's true, I'd lost weight rapidly — 5kg in under two weeks, to be precise — thanks to a concoction of strong pain meds and an adverse gut reaction to them, meaning I hadn't been able to eat properly in weeks. Added to this I hadn't been able to work out for months and I was signed off work for a little while to try to get over the 'acute' phase of my injury. I'm someone who loves sport and fitness — I play netball, cycle long distances, play tennis and squash — as well as train in the gym. It keeps me in shape mentally as well as physically, so it was devastating to have to stop. I was in a dark place, temporarily stripped of my freedom, ability to do normal things — and my muscles were disappearing. I was miserable. And yet everyone was telling me how good I looked.
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I made light of it, joking that I'd gained bingo wings, waving my flabby underarms where toned triceps used to be. What people were calling 'abs' wasn't in fact the core I'd spent years building up, but rather a lack of muscles and the optical illusion of just a bit less fat around my waist. Granted, my legs looked slim for the first time ever and my cheekbones 'popped', but if you looked closely I was gaunt, grey, glassy-eyed and frankly quite sad. I might've looked good to outsiders, but I was the least healthy and happy I'd ever been.
This reaction isn't a one-off. I've had similar comments over the past few months around how 'trim I'm looking these days'. A colleague at work asked me last month if I'd lost weight and most friends I see have been saying the same. One friend I went for a walk with recently even said I had 'Ozempic face … but in a good way'. These are the sorts of compliments some people dream of receiving, but I just brushed them off. I hadn't been trying to get a slimmer frame, I'd been spending most of my time lying flat on the floor, in pain and in a dark place.
Is skinny back to being the new indicator of happiness? Whatever happened to 'strong is the new skinny' — a slogan that came about in the early 2010s and flooded through the fitness industry promoting body positivity? Now, seemingly, we're in a skinny jab-filled world where embracing all body types seems to have gone as quickly as any other wellness fad.
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As a child of the Nineties and Noughties I too have been on the body-insecurity rollercoaster. At 32 I'm part of a generation who grew up with 'burn books' and eating disorders. Going to an all-girls school helped to fuel the toxic body dysmorphia so many of us had. It was never the guys we were trying to impress, it was each other in the Topshop changing rooms, hoping to achieve the perfect 'thigh gap'. As a child I had chubby thighs that I've never really been able to shake. My mother congratulates me on inheriting the 'family thunder thighs'. But aside from the odd family jibe about a few extra pounds I put on at university I'm lucky that I've mostly been brought up in a healthy and sport-obsessed family.
When strong bodies were supposedly in vogue I was in my twenties. Everybody was banging on about body positivity — society told us to look up to celebs (JLo, Beyoncé and plus-sized models such as Ashley Graham) who were celebrated for their big, healthy thighs and fit bodies. For someone who has always struggled with their weight, wanting to be smaller than my size 12-14, I gladly rode the wave. I became happy with my fit womanly physique. I've never been able to slim down, but I do so much sport I'm happy that I can always be toned. It doesn't matter that I'm not naturally a size 8.
When I'm injury-free I work out at least five times a week, flitting from HIIT class to weights in the gym, spinning and reformer Pilates and running, as well as my weekly matches. I love the endorphins working out gives me, but also how much more confident it has made me feel about how my body looks in — or out of — clothes. I've come to love my muscles. I've worked hard for them.
I've always been able to bat away any temptations towards eating disorders. While the girls around me lived on a diet of frozen grapes or ordered diet pills from dark corners of the internet like some of my friends at school did, I've never really even been on a diet. I think this comes more from a position of mental strength than body confidence. I won't pretend that my broad arms and stumpy thighs haven't ever bothered me. I'm just not someone who will obsess over skinniness, as so many seem to be doing again.
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I don't judge people for having weight-loss jabs for non-medical reasons, but it makes me sad that it's fast becoming as common to discuss over the dinner table among my peers as other injectables already are. It's not even slightly unusual for women my age to have Botox — I have resisted.
Since weight-loss drugs came on the scene a couple of years ago I've managed to drown out the noise with my usual coping mechanism: sport. I am still firmly in the camp that strong is better than skinny and, for now, the goal is to get my pre-injury body back and have muscly arms and abs. But it's hard to ignore what's going on around us — body positivity is a nice idea, but I'm not convinced society ever really believed in it.
For a brief moment I achieved the skinny version of me I always wondered and hoped existed, and everyone else noticed her. I admit that despite my initial shock, a bit of me liked this validation, if only for a few weeks. For the first time in my life I started weighing myself every day. I even considered continuing to not eat. The people who messaged me on Instagram had good intent, but my insecurities about my body were feasting on it.
It's hard to ignore what other people see, but I knew I had to start eating again in order to regain my strength to start my physical recovery, to get back to the things that make me tick; to work and to life and to be the healthy version of me, even if that did mean putting on weight.
Skinny might feel good — but it leaves a bitter taste.