At this time of year, fashion writers reveal themselves as defenders of the still-pervasive body fascist ideal. They start answering questions no one has asked: How old do you have to be to wear a bikini? Are shorts OK for people over a size 12? They may be horrified to discover that many brands classify swimsuits that are size 12 as large.
There will be discussions about the length of shorts and skirts, with the caveat that if you don't meet the required slimness, you should cover your knees. There will also be a lot of talk about wearing cardigans over summer dresses. Hide your wings, bingo! Reader beware. Needless to say, I don't subscribe to this school of thought. Life is too short to worry, well, I'm talking about shorts.
But heat waves and the opportunities for skin exposure that come with them bring out the critical old lady in many of us. As women, we constantly undermine ourselves, criticize our bodies, and extend that disdain to others. We spend hours in fitting rooms trying to find our “problem” parts and hide the fleshy bits we don't like. We try to find something “attractive,” which is basically a faux pas for “not looking fat.”
Girls will be told where their bodies fit into our cultural condemnation long before they have time to appreciate them.
Just recently, my daughter came home from school with a story about how some kids in her class had remarked on the size of other girls' legs. She was 6 years old. The seeds of body hatred are planted at an early age and usually come from outside. Girls are told what their body is and where it fits into our cultural framework of stigma long before they have time to evaluate their own bodies for themselves.
The phrase “Beachbody Lady” has recently made a comeback. It's the subject of a boring TV ad by a company called Protein World about a decade ago that drew criticism, was the subject of countless op-eds and social media movements, and prompted the predictable knee-jerk reaction that all bodies are Beachbody Lady. Doctors have revived the phrase in response to an increase in young women being hospitalized for needlessly injecting themselves with weight-loss drugs. Wegovy is the brand name that's gone viral.
The World Health Organisation has just issued a global warning about counterfeiting of these products, but the real thing is readily available from online pharmacies and beauty salons. It has been clear from the beginning of the promotion that girls and women with eating disorders would find a way to obtain appetite suppressants, including by lying on online applications if necessary. It is terrible that there has not been more care and control over how these drugs are obtained before. Obesity phobia is incredibly lucrative.
Young women are unnecessarily injecting themselves with weight loss pills or a brand name called Wegovy. Wegovy is one of the brand names that has been making the rounds.
Anorexia is too complex to be dismissed as simply a desire to be thin, and I don't blame people for getting weight-loss injections as a health issue. When a friend of mine quietly confessed that after years of self-loathing and living in a world where her body was deemed bad, she too was getting weight-loss injections, I understood why it was appealing.
But what we can strive to do better is the low-level ridicule we hurl at our own and other people's bodies, the background noise of hiding our arms and legs in the name of shame rather than false modesty, the tongue-clicking microaggressions directed at every bikini-wearing body, the nicknames given to fleshy thighs and bellies, etc. We must stop planting these seeds of negativity, which are dangerous weeds that take root far too widely and have consequences.
Victoria Moss is the Fashion Director of the Evening Standard and ES Magazine.
