- This video is brought
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for building a brand and growing your business online. Hello, my beautiful doves. I just recorded this entire video and I realized my mic wasn't synced up, so now I'm redoing this entire
thing, which is totally fine. I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm in a completely
different background and I know I've been
teasing out this like, I'm moving to a new apartment thing for my last two videos, but I'm actually not
in New York right now. I'm in California
because most of my family lives in California and
I'm here for the holidays. And so this is my cousin's beautiful wall that I'm sitting in front of today. So for today's video we're
gonna be talking about is skinny back in. If you're on the internet, all which you are because
you're watching this video, you're probably under the
Kardashian sphere of influence I hate to break it to you. And earlier this year there were a bunch of conspiracy theories about how Kim and Chloe Kardashian reversed their BBLs, thus signaling the turning
point in women's body trends. Now, curvy is out and thin is back in. I don't wanna fully blame
the Kardashians per se though I think Kim bragging about how she lost 16 pounds in a month to fit in the Maryland Monroe dress to her millions upon billions of followers is
tremendously irresponsible, to say the least. But you know, it's also
no surprise that Y2K has been having a major fashion
comeback for some years now, and the prevalence of low waist miniskirts and pants on the market has brought back flat torso glorification. So for this video, I want to explore how '90s body trends have affected today's body trends because I've noticed that
a lot of publications who've been discussing
the thinnest back trend have referenced '90s heroin chic. So I do wanna talk about that. And then we're also gonna be
talking about whether or not this veering towards the skinny is something that's actually happening, or if it's just mass hysteria. Let's get into it after today's sponsor. Thank you Squarespace for
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to get 10% off your first purchase of
a website or domain. So heroin chic, which I will be now dubbing
as hero chic to avoid the sensors started off
as a photography trend. It was championed by
photographers like Corinne Day, David Sims, Craig McDean,
and Davide Sorrenti. But we're gonna go a
little bit deeper first prior to the '90s because to
understand what hero chic is, we have to understand the
symbolic representation of drugs in 20th century art. And by the way, I will be saying rugs from
now on because sensors, sorry if I'm being a little bit ridiculous with this coating, but last month, my Tumblr girl video got age
restricted, which basically means I don't get anymore
ad revenue from it, which is like fine I guess
because it's been up for a while. But also what makes me sad is that people can't discover it anymore unless they are over the age of 18 and signed in to YouTube. In the 19th century, rugs were often associated
with signs of weakness and therefore femininity. They could also be
associated with Orientalism or just generalized
exoticism of other cultures. For instance, artists Eugene de Leroy
painting woman of Algiers depicts these North African women lounging with hookah pipes. Rebecca Arnolds writes, "These women's indigent lifestyle was perceived as being
indirect if enticing opposition to the morally contained and rational world of European males. And this painting further contributed to the mythology of the Oplum eater reinforcing the notion of rug taking as a part of Bohemian life, a signifier of artistic liberalism to those who indulged and
a dangerous subversion to the establishment." Painter Edgar Degas 1876 work, absinthe Drinker shows the
other side of rugs in art. The painting is drained of color and the woman in this
painting, the addict, is numb and melancholy. Regardless of these
differences, Arnold's wights, "the absinthe drinker and the Oplum eater both embodied 19th century
fears of degeneration, the belief that a culture is
apt to deteriorate over time, becoming corrupt and dissolute." In the 20th century, the demonization of rugs
worsened as many soldiers on leave from the front of
World War I started using. I mean, can anyone blame them? That sounded like a horrific place to be, but you know, even though
a good number of rugs were previously pretty easy to find, the predominant narrative
now was that rugs users were rug abusers spiraling out of control. So in the 1960s and '70s, the US was a mess in
terms of moral certainty. Aside from the civil
rights movement going on, people were upset under the strain of jobs and poor working conditions and many felt dissatisfied with life, particularly those that
lived in alienating cities. At the same time, a lot of companies were
pushing out these luxurious ads and many people were drawn
into the alert of consumption. Some of this consumption
was rug consumption because rugs offered brief
respite from modern society. Then in the 1980s there
was this fitness craze. So it comes to no surprise
that fashion photography of the time period championed
the healthy toned body with popular supermodels
like Brooke Shields and El McPherson at
gracing the glossy pages. But this fashion imagery
didn't mirror the attitudes of the youth. The US entered a recession in 1990. College graduates were
entering a deflated job market, which they blamed on
the previous generation, the baby boomers. This created a sense of
nihilism and pessimism among the youth, and needless to say, no one wanted to rock an
'80s power suit anymore. Generation X craved
something more authentic, which spawned an era of pop culture that obsessed over being real. Movements like punk grunge
in kids and Riot Girl all rejected the yuppy materialism and the health and fitness
craze of the 1980s. So there's no surprise
that with these movements, skating fervor, legacy magazines like
Vogue and Harper's Bazaar were losing their
connection with the youth. So to fill that void, magazines like the Face
ID and Detour propped up these fashion magazines also hired an up and coming photographers
who shared a similar vision. Once again, they rejected the notion of '80s glamor and instead opted to show
a truer image of reality. This perception that came
through in their photography came to be called Dirty Realism. Dirty realism presented the
bleakest aspects of reality, poverty, violence,
self-destruction, banality, the morality of the body, you name it. This wasn't the first time of course that photographers worked
with the subject matter. In the mid-century
photographers, Richard Avadon, Helmit Newton and Guy Borden sought to break away from
traditional magazine imagery and instead focused on violent, erotic and fetishistic imagery. As fashion editor Laura Craig writes, "They pushed the limits
of fashion photography to produce images that shocked by questioning the foundations of fashion and making inter textural references to the other cultural debates." Arnold explains the
appeal of dirty realism, "The desire to experience danger excess if only voyeuristically
via the visual image has power in a society
constantly seeking a new thrill." These kinds of alternative representations mostly state in the pages
of alternative magazines and indie art shows where
they were readily accepted. But in 1993, photographer Corinne Day
really shook up the table. When she was hired by British Vogue, she shot Kate Moss in skimpy underwear in a pretty underwhelming setup when you look back at it
from today's point of view. But at the time it created
a lot of public outcry, especially because all the other shoots that were featured in
the magazine issue were, you know, the stereotypical,
glossy, luxurious spreads. So this moment is what
a lot of people consider to be the mainstream entry of hero chic, even though it doesn't
really feel like that once you look at later photographs. For instance, days 1995
photographed Regina Brixton was actually way more in line with the typical hero chic genre. The photograph features a
model and a claustrophobic, cheap, bland interior,
and her body's contorted her expression is confused
and the overall unkeptness implicates rug abuse. Despite this Day, has actually denied the label of hero chic because she has claimed that she has not been
glamorizing anything. She's simply showing reality. Similarly, when Craig Mcdean shot the 1996 Jil Sander's
spring summer campaign in catalog model Guinevere van Seenus was styled with messy
knotted hair, clammy skin, and red rimmed eyes. Sander defended this choice saying, "There is a generational change. We want to dress women in
a way so they feel modern. I don't want them to look
retro or eighties looks. I'm totally against it. It's too easy." When critics claim after
her for glamorizing rugs, she explained this makeup has nothing to do with the rug scene. It has something to do with
sensitivity and refinement and going away from the
old fashioned world. We are not in the old time. Sometimes you have to
punch harder to go forward. We can't go back to
the old idea of beauty. Similarly, former creative
director of Culture magazine surface, Riley John Donald said, "What you're calling a heroin, look, we're calling a real look. Claiming sweaty is what
someone can look like in their apartment in New York, a lot of these images are domestic, sitting in apartments sitting on couches. It makes fashion more accessible." I don't know, when I look at these images, I don't see anything
particularly sinister. I also think it's just
because fashion photography has developed so much over the years, like people have gotten really
editorial with their shoots. So something like this,
once again seems very tepid, but it was interpreted as being associated with this underground youth scene because these photographs differed so much from mainstream fashion photography and there was this mass
hysteria at the time, Vogue even published an article in 1994 about the media's
glamorization of drugs titled Under the Influence. So that definitely guided
people into perceiving imagery a certain way. Also, if you remember, Hollywood
was on this wave as well. "Basketball Diaries," "Pulp
Fiction" and "Train Spotting" were all like major hits. But also in the mid '90s there
were these media publications that were confirming
the rise of heroin usage among middle to upper middle
class suburban white teenagers. So when there's all these
things going on at once, there is mass hysteria
and so it is way easier to look at this disheveled
model and be like, "Yeah, she's part of the problem." I also think dirty realism as
a genre is completely fine. I think it's very important to showcase both the positive and the
negative aspects of humanity. But at the same time, I see what critics are saying because it's fashion photography and in the realm of fashion photography, any subject matter is coded as glamorous and not just showing reality. Let me explain. The glamorization aspect comes from how at the end of the day, these editorial photographs are meant to promote consumerism. At the end of the day, we perceive fashion photography differently than we
perceive photojournalism. The underlying advertising
aspect of fashion photography makes the hero chic genre
feel exploitative and icky. Another major hero chic
moment was when Calvin Klein pushed their CKB fragrance campaign. In this campaign, the models were described resembling teens waiting outside of a methadone
clinic for their next fix. Anna joint press release, anti rugg leaders charged that Klein had betrayed American parents trust in a misguided and dangerous effort to glamorize hero addiction
to appeal to adolescents. Further, they deemed the campaign obscene and even likened it to glamorizing cancer. Another problem with the genre is that it can be seen as exploitative of underprivileged youth. Cultural critic, Henry Aju argues that hero
chic amends a little more than cultural slumming as cheap situation for its yuppie audience whose
members imagine themselves being reckless and edgy as they
appropriate, the behaviors, dress, discourse and experiences
of those who occupied the most tragic margins of society. So in the end, it's generally accepted that
the trend came to a halt because of fashion
photographer David Sorrenti's death in 1997. His cause of death was
at first misreported as a heroen overdose, and this incident confirmed
the public spheres that heroen use was on a dramatic rise and that hero chic imagery glamorized it. In May, 1997, president Bill Clinton even condemned the fashion
industry at a press conference. - In the press In recent days, we've seen reports that
many of our fashion leaders are now absolutely admitting and I honor them for doing this. They're admitting flat
out that images projected in fashion photos in the last few years have made addiction seen
glamorous and sexy and cool. You do not need to glamorize
addiction to sell clothes. - Critics leader claim
that the fashion industry was used as a scapegoat
for systemic problems, including Craig who
wrote, "It is far easier to blame the fashion industry than to look at the cultural
and sociological reasons for rug abuse. People take hero because they hate life and quite possibly hate
themselves as well, or because they have no money and no hope or because they have everything but it still isn't enough or because they are genetically
predisposed to addiction or because they hate it and can't stop or because they like it and don't want to, not solely because they
saw a model in a magazine who they thought looked cool." Over the years, the photography origins of
hero chic has kind of been lost now people use it as a term to reference any kind of like skinny fashion look, which is not like super far off because a lot of the models who were featured in
this photography genre were very skinny. But I would argue that the skinny era didn't really reach its peak
until after the hero chic era. In the early 2000s,
and I'm probably biased because I didn't really
live through the '90s, I was like three years old in the '90s, but at least when looking at
fashion trends of the era, a lot of '90s trends
revolved around baggy fits. And so the thin body
shape wasn't as intrusive in the mainstream, but in the 2000s a lot of fashion trends, including micro miniskirts and baby tees, clearly championed a certain body type. Of course, anyone in theory can wear these kinds of garments, but tabloids insulting
famous women for muffin tops. Hollywood movies and TV shows making fat phobic jokes and magazines publishing
numerous dieting guides created the narrative that if
you didn't have a flat tummy, don't bother participating. Hero chic poster girl, Kate Moss said it herself in 2009. Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels though I do feel like I have to add that she did retract her
statement 10 years later. But you get the gist of the era. A few months ago the cup
published a bit of a mass hysteria article titled Internet
Thin Culture Is Back,. In it they note Kim
Kardashian's thinner body and her tummy tightening promotions, the variations of the '90s
hero chic body becoming popular Search terms on TikTok, Tumblr's Pro and a language migrating onto TikTok, the Lowrise whale tail trend, the Mimi mini skirt, shameless
body checking on Maine, and the hashtag that girl lifestyle that revolves around green juice breakfast in 6:00 AM Pilates classes. They also reported how
brands like Old Navy and Loft actually ditched their
plus size collections earlier this year. And in a Refinery 29 article, it was reported that only 10 of Madewell's 144 stores nationwide carry their plus size
line in all denim styles. Similarly, reformation has been criticized
for their lack of in-store plus size offerings showing
once again how their fat customers are under prioritized. The Los Angeles Times
also reported in 2021 that medical fat shaming
increased during the pandemic and got in the way of proper care. Eating disorders have
also been on the rise, and if any of you keep up with Deuximol which is my guilty pleasure and know I will not be shamed for it, how else am I gonna know
what Timothy Jae Starbucks order is? But have you've been
keeping up with Deuximol or other celebrity gossip sites, you've probably heard of how Ozempic has been infiltrating Hollywood. For those of you who don't
know Ozempic is a medication. It is a prescription drug
used to treat type 2 diabetes and it contains semaglutide
which manages blood glucose and prevents dangerous complications. However, one of the main side effects is that it can lead to a
weight loss of up to 14.9%, which has convinced a lot of
people who don't have diabetes to get the medication specifically
to shed a couple pounds. Wegovy, which is another semaglutide, is another very popular
weight loss mechanism around celebrity circles. Elon Musk in October, 2022 even tweeted that the secret to his weight
loss was fasting and Wegovy. There are some differences between the two Wegovy is a higher
dosed version of Ozempic and is used specifically
to treat weight loss, whereas Ozempic has been approved for type 2 diabetes treatment only. So to qualify for Wegovy, you have to be at a certain BMI, which I know is like a flawed system, but still you have to be a
certain BMI that's what it is now the problem is that
it's easy to work around that if you just go to a shady med spa or telehealth service, the prices are also notably different. So without insurance, Wegovy is about $1,400 a month and Ozempic is about $900 a month. I don't know about Wegovy, but I do know that for Ozempic, because it's used to
treat a chronic condition, you're supposed to like
never stop using it. So yeah, that racks up in price, but because we're talking about a certain demographic of people, Ozempic has been considered
the more affordable weight loss option and consequently this has led to an increased demand for the prescription medication. On TikTok, there was
actually a viral trend called #Ozempic challenge where people shared their
weight loss results, which inevitably led to a surge usage. This increased demand as
well as supply chain issues has called a shortage of the medication. Unfortunately, because of the shortage, people who are actually diabetic are not getting this
prescription medication to help them regulate their blood sugar and so they're being forced to seek out other alternatives and if you live in America, you know how messy the
healthcare system is and how much red tape
you have to swim through. So no, it's not really fair for people who actually
need this for their lives to suffer just because some rich people want to lose 10 pounds
in time for a MET Gala. Another problem is that like
every prescription medication there are side effects and for Ozempic it's mostly gastrointestinal side effects that can range from nausea and vomiting to pancreatitis and kidney problems. But the problem is, if you're not getting
prescribed this medication by a responsible and knowledgeable doctor, which you probably wouldn't be if you're getting prescribed it just for weight loss reasons, you're not gonna have this
like professional assistance in monitoring these side effects. I think we like also need a reality track that there's only a certain number of people who are actually
able to get Ozempic because of the high costs out of pocket, but that population is celebrities and influencers who do
have a major influence on just trends overall. Vice reported that California
based medical professionals insist everyone is on it despite no one in Hollywood
openly talking about it as far as I know, other
than Elon Musk I guess. But even if these people are
not like outwardly expressing how they're doing it,
they're still losing weight. And I think when so many of these rich and famous beautiful
people are losing weight, it creates this narrative
that thin is chic and we should all aspire to be that. Similar to hero chic, I think there is a particular subgroup known as girl bloggers and fem cells who promote a way thinness
that is a reaction against the hashtag of that girl toned thinness. The difference is, you know, the way thinness is really
about like looking more emaciated, undereye bags, hollow cheekbones definitely
like the hero chic type of thinness versus the
that girl thinness is more like, "Oh we just do Pilates every morning and we work out five times
a day and we eat really well and that's why we're thin,
but we're still like healthy." I made a video on girl
bloggers and fem cells earlier this year and so I don't really
wanna go into it again. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go click on that video. But in general, the Girl Bloggers aesthetic self-destruction is a rejection of millennial girl boss wellness culture. Thus the 2020s depictions of MAA lattes, bullet journals and CREs
point linens feel reminiscent of Vogue's Brook Shield's a
fitness propaganda of the 1980s and like hero chic, the desire to portray the
uglier parts cigarettes, unposed pictures on Instagram and $bereal attempt to display the unfiltered reality most of us are actually living. - Nah. Yeah. No. Oh yeah, definitely not. Oh yeah. Ugh. Yeah. (humming) June photo dump. - I don't know if it's too soon to say, but I definitely feel like at
least what the algorithm shows me that Instagram and TikTok are becoming these visual diaries that
Tumblr used to be in 2013. Once again, I think it's okay when you're doing it on a personal level, but I do raise an eyebrow
when I see corporations trying to get in on this trend. For instance, skincare
brands like Bad Habit Beauty and 4:00 AM use Indie
Lee's Party Girl marketing, even though their products
still revolve around wellness. I'm sorry, but no amount of dirty martinis or flashy film photos in your campaigns is going to make a moisturizing serum anything less than a moisturizing serum. Let's call a spade a spade. The other more major
problem of skinny exposure on social media is that days reported how ED online support
groups have had a documented significant rise in members
in that January, 2022 UK Eating Disorder Charity Beat provided the highest
number of support sessions for people affected by EDS in
a single month in its history. A 7% increase from the
same time period last year. I do wanna say though that there can be some data discrepancies because I think as we become
more technologically dependent, resources become more
accessible on the internet. Like and there are probably
were a lot of people in the 2000s and the '90s who had EDs and who just suffered in silence because these online support
groups weren't available. So it's hard to say whether or not there's actually been an increase. I'm not like completely
denying the fact that being exposed to certain imagery
can be really triggering. 25 year old Holly told days that lockdown and the reintroduction
of Y2K were big triggers for her friends, especially
the celebration of thinness and using thinness as an
accessory talk's algorithm has been showing her skinny,
predominantly white girls eating the equivalent of a
toddler's diet for months. Over the past year, journalists have also been
scrutinizing a TikTok trend known as body checking. It's essentially a trend where
someone flexes their body or a certain feature of their body. For example, if you peruse
the hashtags, jawline checks, small waste and side profile, these all have hundreds
of millions of views. I don't think it's necessarily
like a negative thing, like always to be proud
of a feature of your body and I guess want to show people, but I think that hyper fixating
on any part of your body for a long term can be very dangerous because bodies change naturally. So if you're flexing
your hashtag small waste, which I think is probably
the worst one of those three, one day you might wake up bloated and you might be reaching for your phone to make this content and you're like, I can't make this content, I'm bloated, it can open this Pandora's
box of self-deprecating talk. So yeah, I don't think
it's a good trend overall as spokesperson for Beat even said, "This is very concerning as we know that details about
specific weights, dress sizes, calories and exercise
conserve as inspiration for those Eds ffected by EDs to engage in harmful behaviors
and become more unwell." At the same time I know I've like spent this entire video kind
of on how skinny culture is ruining lives and leading
to societal detriment. I also wanna warn against mass hysteria because if you really think about it, skinny has always been in Jessica Gross fruit for the New York Times. "It's clear to me and to
anyone who's been studying teen and tween girls over the past few decades that the super thin ideal
never really went away. No matter the rise of the
jeans the Hadid sisters happened to be wearing and the insidious nature of that ideal has been pretty constant since the '90s or has possibly become worse. A review of studies
published from 2000 to 2018 found that the prevalence of EDs increased over the study
period from 3.5% for the 2000 to 2006 period to 7.8% for
the 2013 to 2018 period." Again, I do wanna draw
attention to the fact that a lot of times EDs are underreported, so it may just seem like it's increasing because more people are
coming forward about it because dialogue and discussions about EDs have become more prominent in the culture. I don't know, that's,
that's just a possibility. And also something that I
think is happening right now is there's a lot more
awareness of anti-fat bias in the media and I think body shaming is way more frowned upon. Like you couldn't get away
with making fat jokes anymore for good reason, like
that's a positive thing. But you know, compared to the 2000s, if you said anything
like what you would see in those TV shows, like it's you're done. Rightfully so. But if we're gonna be really honest, despite these changes in discussions, not much has actually
happened like the past decade has not been as body positive as some of these journalists
are making it seem. The fashion industry has
always operated a tokenism of fat bodies. Case in point, Paloma Assessor wore the
famous mumu miniskirt in a shoot, but the brand
doesn't actually sell her size. It was a custom made
specifically for the shoot and as I mentioned with you
know, made Well and Reformation. They do have these plus size clothes. I don't know where they are because they're not in the store. They make it really inaccessible. They really show how they
deprioritize their fat customers because you know, if you go into the store they have the full maximum
range for straight sizes. And even though some people like to tout the whole like slim thick is going against the grain and offering a new type of body to enter the limelight, is it still really positive though it's still championing a
very difficult silhouette that only a certain number of people are actually naturally born with other people who want to be
part of this have to get BBLs or implants which are
very dangerous procedures and still slim thick is about having like a relatively flat stomach. So in the end, I don't think it's any more achievable than a way thin body type. The 2010s body positivity tried
to be about this self-love, but it's so hard to do and it
didn't acknowledge the fact that corporations all types of industries are working against you. It's working to promote
a negative self-image so that they can profit
off of your insecurities to sell things. So when there are entire systems that have been in place
for years and years working against you, some random
comment that Kate Moss made feels like the least offending player. So thank you all for watching. Please let me know in the comments what you think about this topic and whether you think
that then is on the rise or if you think I never left and what you think is
going to be the future for the body positivity movement. I hope you have a lovely
rest of your holiday season and I'll see you in the New Year. Have a good one. Bye.
