The reason thinness is becoming more extreme

It's not just GLP-1s. A culture obsessed with optimization and status is pushing the ideal of thinness to new extremes.

In the last two weeks, after the announcement that a certain pop star who has looked increasingly thinner over the past few years would be “taking a step back from visibility,” there has been no shortage of opinions. Some argue we should never be commenting on another person’s body. Others argue that when someone appears dangerously thin, saying nothing is also dangerous. Of course, plenty has been written about her body, as well as the bodies of numerous other celebrities seemingly shrinking with every appearance. The headlines either celebrate their dramatically slimmer bodies or sound the alarm; the rest of the world looks on with a mixture of envy and worry.

Alongside this has been a growing number of news articles documenting the rise in eating disorders or relapses among women, particularly those in midlife, with the popularity of GLP-1 drugs for weight loss. For those of us who’ve lived with eating disorders ourselves or loved someone who has had one, this isn’t particularly surprising. When an entire culture becomes consumed by the pursuit of thinness, there will be consequences.

It’s easy to blame all of this on the marketing of GLP-1 medications for weight loss, and it certainly played a major role. After decades of telling people weight was simply a matter of willpower, the story became: It’s not your fault. It’s your genetics.

For many who have struggled with weight their whole lives, this was a relief. They finally felt seen. But instead of fostering greater acceptance, the next message was: now it’s time to do something about it.

That still doesn’t fully explain this trend toward extreme thinness.

When GLP-1s arrived, we’d already been taught to see thinness as a proxy for health, and health as something we could optimize for. The lines between beauty, health, and longevity were blurring. Our bodies became improvement projects rather than places to live. Now, every perceived flaw has a treatment. Every stage of life has an optimization strategy.

And there have been genuine breakthroughs that allow us to live better lives, but there’s a dangerous underbelly to this constant optimization. Once we start to believe every body problem has a solution, choosing not to solve it begins to look reckless. Irresponsible. To ourselves and everyone else.

Social media amplified the messages, because appearance is the physical manifestation of health, surrounding us with curated images of what we should look like. Heavily filtered. Often surgically enhanced. Increasingly AI-generated. If the woman we’re comparing ourselves against seems unattainable, it might be because she isn’t actually real.

Not that this will actually stop us from hating ourselves.

GLP-1s were the ultimate promise. If you don’t like your body, here’s how to shrink it. As more people got on board, the pressure to do it grew. The unspoken assumption became: If everyone else is doing it, shouldn’t I be doing it too?

Frankly, a good chunk of the people using these meds aren’t fat to begin with. They’re fit, active, midlife women. They’re the same people who’ve been trying to lose the proverbial last ten pounds. And now, the perception is, they can.

In the beginning of the GLP-1 for weight loss days, many believed these medications would lower the barrier to thinness for everyone. Finally, those of us who felt ostracized for our size would finally fit in. And certainly for some individuals, this probably rings true. But, collectively, the standard simply shifted. That is why we’re seeing this trend toward extreme thinness.

And what about the people who remain in larger bodies, who can’t afford these medications, can’t tolerate them, don’t want to take them, or simply don’t respond to them? As cultural expectations shift, they bear the brunt. The harassment, stigma, and hostility they already faced has intensified because the assumption is that thinness is available to anyone who wants it. If you’re in a larger body, it’s because you’ve chosen to be there.

And the roots of these messed up beliefs aren’t new. Societal systems have always found new ways to distinguish themselves.

French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu argued that status depends not simply in possessing something valuable, but in possessing something that remains difficult to obtain. As thinness became more attainable, it no longer held the same value. It wasn’t enough to just be thin. We had to be even thinner than we were before.

You don’t have to look far to see this shift. It’s playing out on virtually every red carpet. Celebrities who were considered exceptionally thin just a few years ago are even smaller now. The media coverage and resulting reaction alternates between admiration and alarm, but it all serves the same purpose: keeping our attention fixed on how we appear. And when attention itself is the currency, it doesn’t really matter whether it’s framed as positive or negative. Before long, that trend trickles down to the rest of us, which is what’s already happening.

These days, the online groups I’m in—for active women managing menopause and perimenopause—are rife with desperate pleas from women who have never considered themselves overweight or who have always been able to manage the few pounds that crept up over the years. Now the weight has settled around their middle, the old strategies aren’t working, and they’re wondering whether GLP-1s are the answer.

Writing for Feisty Media, Hit Play Not Pause podcast host Selene Yeager recently shared: “Hands down the number one concern women in our community have is body composition changes—specifically weight gain—despite still training and fueling the same way.”

This isn’t because midlife bodies have suddenly changed. While the term “meno belly” is new, the biological propensity for women to gain weight during this phase of life has been documented throughout history. What’s changed is the reference point. We’ve become more likely to interpret this normal biological shift as yet one more thing that requires intervention.

The problem with the treadmill of endless optimization are the unintended consequences. In the case of weight loss, more of us are crossing this invisible threshold into nutritional deficiencies, disordered eating, or full-blown eating disorders. Last summer, the New York Times reported a rise in eating disorders among women in midlife and beyond, with some of them relapsing years or even decades into recovery.

The problem with the fixation on celebrity thinness is it reinforces the myth that you have to be extremely thin to be sick. Many people with eating disorders, including anorexia, the most deadly mental illness outside opioid addiction, are not underweight. There is no universal warning system because every body responds differently to starvation.

During an event this week celebrating the paperback release of her memoir Slip: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery, Mallary Tenore Tarpley shared a sobering thought: it’s entirely possible that many of these celebrities are struggling with eating disorders. Of course, this is not something anyone needs to disclose publicly or otherwise, but we do need more conversations around the topic.

Right now, we’re at the point where it feels like these celebrities are the outliers, extreme examples of what happens when we go too far. Like all trends, the pendulum eventually will swing back, because we can’t just keep losing weight forever. And some of us are pushing back. We already see pockets of resistance in influencers and everyday people alike who are taking a stand, proudly living their lives to the fullest with the bodies they exist in. And I think we’ll see more women prioritizing strength over shrinking as they reclaim their bodies in menopause and look ahead to their older years. But I worry we’re just at the beginning of this trend toward ultra thinness that will ultimately lead to even more eating disorders and more deaths. And for what? Health? Beauty? Because if our standards are built on the most unattainable ideals of distinction, the bar will always keep moving.

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I’d love to hear what you think. It feels like we’re not talking enough about the underlying reasons these standards have shifted and more importantly what we can do about it.