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Irish Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
‘Skinny is social capital': Extreme thinness is back and it's more dangerous than ever
The internet was meant to democratise culture. Mobile phones. Online bulletin boards. Social media. Writers such as Howard Rheingold and Clay Shirky praised its role in political mobilisation – anti-globalisation protests, Arab Spring, riots in the Philippines. They rarely mentioned the pro-ana (anorexia) movement, where girls and women gathered online to share starvation tips and 'thinspiration'. Photos of jutting ribs were captioned like inspirational posts. Instead of 'all dreams are within reach', they said, 'nothing tastes as good as skinny feels'. A social media trend has made extreme thinness aspirational once more (if it ever wasn't). But SkinnyTok, as it's known, shuns old-school diet culture. Instead, thinness is coded as luxury, wellness and discipline. I could unpack the ideology but influencers are doing it for me: 'Skinny is the outfit,' says one creator. 'Being skinny sends a message. You respect yourself. You prioritise yourself ... It's ... not just about looking hot; it's high value.' 'I feel like it's such a currency to be skinny,' a thirtysomething woman gushes alongside her before and after photos. It's easy to mock this as teenage drama but its reach is wider, especially for women who've already lived through several beauty regimes. When I was a teenager, I liked to watch music videos on weekend mornings: Beautiful, Dirty, Toxic, Cry Me a River. In my memory, the women in these videos merge into one hard torso in low-rise jeans. I'd stand on my dad's EZ recliner so I could see my reflection in the mirror over the fireplace, lifting my pyjama top to survey the contours of my less-ideal body. READ MORE One of these videos was Beyoncé 's Crazy in Love. She prowls down an LA street in hot pants and heels. I loved her confidence. I loved her body – her strong calves and thighs. 'Huge legs,' my sister declared, wandering in. 'I think she looks amazing,' I remember saying. 'Well, if she looks amazing then I look amazing,' she replied, as though that settled it. (She was tall, slim and athletic, but my dad had recently called her 'thunder thighs' for wearing a minidress.) [ Bridget Jones and me: 51 and in slimming knickers Opens in new window ] For those of us who came of age in that era, noughties body culture is like a stretch mark on the psyche: it fades with time, but it's never quite gone. This was when Bridget Jones was 'fat' at 130lb. When tabloid magazines ran 'circles of shame' to highlight celebrity cellulite. When a swarm of size-00 women styled by Rachel Zoe lugged giant handbags down the red carpet, their stick-figure arms straining beneath the weight. Terms like 'thigh gap' and 'muffin top' entered the lexicon, shorthand for how our bodies could succeed or fall short. Of course, thinness has been the western beauty ideal since the early 20th century. No longer a sign of poverty, a snatched waist was a sign of a woman who could afford, but didn't want, food. By the time 1990s 'heroin chic' emerged, the link was firm. As Susan Bordo argues in Unbearable Weight, womanness on the cusp of the millennium dovetailed with desirable social and economic values: self-discipline, restraint, ambition. Sophie Gilbert, meanwhile, author of Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women against Themselves, claims noughties diet culture weaponised shame 'in a way that would neutralise women's ambitions and ... protect patriarchal power'. In the 2010s something changed. As Keeping up with the Kardashians became prime viewing, the ideal softened – not away from thinness exactly, but toward an aesthetic that embraced 'thick' thighs, a Brazilian butt, muscles. 'Clean eating', 'wellness' and 'glow-ups' outpaced the language of calorie-counting. Slimness (and whiteness) were still idealised, but there were more ways to look beautiful – or at least more ways to optimise. Plus-size models such as Ashley Graham graced the covers of Vogue. The culture became less openly hostile to flesh, more critical of body shame. Books like Rory Freedman's Skinny Bitch (2005), 'perhaps you have a lumpy arse because you are preserving your fat cells with diet soda' now felt off-key. Fatphobia hadn't died but we were saying the quiet part quietly. [ Emer McLysaght: Can we please send the Kardashians some big knickers and a slanket? Opens in new window ] If Kim Kardashian 's curves once stood for 'body positivity', the end came in 2022 when she crash dieted into a Marilyn Monroe dress for the Met Gala. In 2025 the size-zero body is back – now cloaked in the aesthetics of self-care and girl dinner. Last Tuesday, after European regulators expressed concern, TikTok blocked the search for #Skinnytok. But when I input 'skinny' into the search bar, I'm met with a page full of videos. In one, an ostentatiously thin woman outlines the difference between regular and 'wealthy skinny'. Wealthy skinny has less in common with TikTok's book wealth trend (basically having lots of books as furniture) and more with 'clean girl beauty' or 'quiet luxury'. Regular skinny is tacky and trend driven, she explains. Wealthy skinny, on the other hand, is about control. 'It's not about looking hot for the summer. It's about restraint, polish and discipline. It's effortless.' Above the videos a disclaimer reads 'you are more than your weight'. Social media helped drive body positivity. Now it sells disordered eating as a lifestyle choice. In this world, skinny is social capital. It's high value. Not dieting but 'gut health', not hunger but 'balance'. It's not always clear if this content is earnest or rage bait. Comments swing between 'how do I get this rib-cage?' and 'eat a sandwich'. Either way, it doesn't matter. Extreme content, like extreme bodies, drives engagement. But I suspect I'm drawn to this debate because, right now, I don't feel very skinny. Metabolism, medication and excessive biscuit eating has converged so that, despite being a healthy weight, I feel less than ideal. Feeling bad about my waist feels shallow, stupid even – like I've drunk the diet Kool-Aid. But women aren't stupid. Or duped. Or vain. We've been shown the shape of the world in the ideal shape of our bodies, and we've absorbed the message. To be skinny still feels like it is to be accepted in the world, if not the body, we live in.
Daily Mail
14-05-2025
- Daily Mail
Entitled behavior and excuses of lazy NYU students using AI to complete their assignments
College students at New York University have found a new way to complete their assignments - letting artificial intelligence do it for them. The use of ChatGPT - an AI chatbot - has consumed the campus, leaving students virtually addicted to using it to get their schoolwork done, according to an NYU administrator. Clay Shirky, the Vice Provost of Educational Technologies of New York University, shared his opinion on the growing trend in an op-ed for The Chronicle of Higher Education called 'Is AI Enhancing Education or Replacing It?' Since generative AI first emerged, Shirky said he has spent a great deal of time talking to professors and students to help them better understand the use of the technology on campus. From those conversations, he found that many educators at the university 'have been variously vexed, curious, angry, or excited about AI,' but in recent times, they have experienced a great deal of 'sadness' because of it. NYU students have told professors that they use AI technology to complete their work because that's what everyone is doing and that without it assignments are 'too hard', professors told Shirky. These responses came after Shirky worked with his colleagues to help them grasp what AI is and how to respond to AI-generated work. He even suggested they offer students 'a second chance rather than simply grading down,' when use of the technology is detected in their work. One professor even 'AI-proofed his assignments' earlier this semester in a bid to crack down on the issue, according to Shirky. One student asked the teacher for an extension because 'ChatGPT was down the day the assignment was due,' while another compared the use of AI technology to a car making it easier for people to get around. Shirky said the student responded to the professor's attempt to crack down on the trend with: 'You're asking me to go from point A to point B, why wouldn't I use a car to get there?' Meanwhile, another undergrad said they use AI to complete their assignments because 'everyone is doing it,' Shirky said. While many students have become combative with professors trying to intervene in AI usage, others expressed they are 'deeply conflicted' about it because they have grown increasingly dependent on the technology. 'I've become lazier. AI makes reading easier, but it slowly causes my brain to lose the ability to think critically or understand every word,' one said. 'I feel like I rely too much on AI, and it has taken creativity away from me,' said another. Others have been left stressed out about the use of AI to summarize their work and academic text. One shared: 'Sometimes I don't even understand what the text is trying to tell me. Sometimes it's too much text in a short period of time, and sometimes I'm just not interested in the text.' Shirky said many students have turned to AI because it speeds up the process to complete their work in time for deadlines. Often students juggle more than just school, as they have jobs, internships, extracurriculars and personal obligations to take care of at the same time, he noted. Shirky, who has written 'extensively about the Internet since 1996,' said it is 'critical' that students exhibit self-restraint when it comes to AI usage in their academics. He referred to a Reddit post made last November that an undergrad student made under the title 'Can't stop using Chat GPT on HW.' In it, the anonymous student said: 'I literally can't even go 10 seconds without using Chat when I am doing my assignments. They also said they had grown to 'hate what I have become' because they have learned 'NOTHING' in class because of their dependence. Shirky said he and others 'have made a collective mistake' about the trend by 'believing that lazy and engaged uses lie on a spectrum, and that moving our students toward engaged uses would also move them away from the lazy ones.' He found two issues with AI usage in the classroom, with the first one being that the community needs to determine 'how to encourage our students to adopt creative and helpful uses' of it. The second is to figure out a way to discourage them from adopting lazy and harmful use,' Shirky said, adding that this problem 'is harder.'
