The ideal body shape for women has been constantly evolving throughout the twentieth century. From pin-up model’s hourglass figures in the 1950s, the waifish androgynous look of Twiggy in the 1960s, Victoria Secret model’s, toned and chiselled in the 2000s to the curvy and unattainable beauty standards of the 2010s. As we move further into a new decade, articles such as “Bye Bye Booty: Heroin Chic is back” in The New York Post, illustrate a concern that the new body trend for women is shifting further away from the body positivity movement of recent years and a new era of ‘heroin chic’, and the extreme thinness associated with it, is re-emerging. This essay will explore as of 2022, whether the online concern over the return of Heroin Chic is simply a case of media hysteria. It will focus on fashion imagery and influencer culture, and consider whether the unrealistic beauty standards of the 2010s and the rise in surgeries like ‘BBL’s’ (Brazilian butt lift’s) has created a regression back to the 1990s trend.
To answer this accurately it is crucial to first dissect whether there was ever a time this narrow bodily ideal was not the beauty standard for women presented in western, Eurocentric media since the end of the 1990s. When looking at aesthetic trends in relation to the body, throughout the 2000s/2010s, there has been an array of body positive content, as well as what was coined as ‘thinsperation’ by the pro-ana (pro-anorexia) community to promote images of slenderness that represent aspects of anorexic experience and/or to idealise extreme to emaciated slender bodies.
Heroin chic materialised in the 1990s, with Calvin Klein’s 1993 ‘Obsession’ perfume campaign featuring Kate Moss often being hailed as the beginning of the fashion trend. Psychologist Christine Summer rather provocatively described it as championing "concentration-camp-thin models with pasty complexions sporting blackened eyes, limp hair, and designer outfits.” This photography trend, although now more associated simply with the image of underweight and fragile looking women, was originally linked with a sense of moral panic around the glamorisation of drug use. This was as imagery of, as Professor Christine Harold describes,“thin, glassy eyed youths seemingly strung out in dirty bathrooms or dingy motels” was incorporated into the fashion photography of the time, in heroin chic photography, as fashion historian Rebecca Arnold explains, drugs are never “actually explicit but implied . . . by gestures, settings, and facial expressions”. This would lead photographer Nan Goldin (commonly considered the "mother" of heroin chic) to state she was concerned about the affect the "wasted" images might have on young people, warning that the “glamour of self-destruction wears off". This eventually faded from mainstream media and fashion in 1997 after severe condemnation from anti-drug activists and the heroin induced death of prominent fashion photographer Davide Sorrenti. Clavin Klein would denounce the trend soon after, launching a new fashion line he described as “prettier, healthier, cleaner” and by 1999, American Vogue had dubbed supermodel Gisele "The Return of the Sexy Model" and subsequently the end of the heroin chic era.
The new millennium saw the beginning of plus size models in mainstream media, as models like Ashley Graham, Emme and Tess Holliday rose in popularity, and models outside of the sample size appeared more frequently on fashion week runways. This can be seen in figure 3, which presents the gradual rise in the number of plus size models cast in New York, Paris and Milan fashion shows within the span of four years, with fourteen plus size models being cast in the spring/summer shows of 2016 and fifty in the autumn/winter shows of 2019. In 2014 Eden Miller’s spring/summer runway was also the first entirely plus-size collection, modelled on plus-size models, in New York Fashion Week’s seventy-year history. Fashion as an industry aims to capture the cultural zeitgeist of the moment to sell a garment or brand to the consumer, therefore it could be argued that this increased use of curve models in runway shows could demonstrate a change in industry standard. As the 2010s progressed, the body positivity movement gained momentum, ‘Kardashian curves’ became sought-after, and the wellness industry’s prevalence saw outward facing health become a status symbol as being perceived as healthy and subsequently not underweight most definitely emerged as the most coveted aesthetic.
Under the auspices of the body positivity movement there has also been a rapid increase of campaigns dedicated to nurturing the development of bodily acceptance. One example of this is Dove’s ‘Real Beauty’ campaign that began in 2004, which aimed to challenge women to question their notions of beauty across the globe by representing a diverse range of people and body types. ‘Real Beauty’ was launched after a survey found from out of over 3000 women in 10 different countries, that only 2% of women considered themselves beautiful and 90% of women between the ages of 15 and 64 wanted to change at least one aspect of their physical appearance, with body weight ranking as the highest. Campaigns like this have been a catalyst for inclusivity within media, with studies finding these types of advertisements made women feel more comfortable about their own bodies and inspired by the body confidence and self-acceptance that the models portrayed. The success of campaigns like ‘Real Beauty’, amongst others, such as Glossier’s ‘Body Hero’ campaign, are a clear indicator that there was most definitely progress being made when considering the depiction of Women’s bodies in media and the subsequent effects they had on societies outlook on certain body standards.
However, such representation is still entangled with the societal aspiration of thinness, with stylist Fran Burns stating “I think we’ve seen a lot of positive change. But I still don't think it’s been normalised. It’s the exception, rather than the rule”. In 2020 Burns posted an image to Instagram showing a UK size 8 model unable to fit into a sample size pair of Celine trousers, displaying an obvious internal issue within not only the fashion industry, but of perceptions of what woman’s bodies should supposedly look like according to media at a larger scale.
Thinness being seen as the ultimate goal of beauty in media, can also be seen in the viral ‘thigh gap’ trend, closely associated with anorexia and an obsessive desire to be as thin as possible, only perpetuated by the romanticisation of skinny bodies online. In 2013 social media sites such as Instagram and Tumblr became inundated with the ‘ITG’ or ‘innerthighgap’ hashtags with encouraging articles by fashion magazines adding to the movement, for example, Cosmopolitans "The Top 10 Inner Thigh Exercises For Sexy B*tches”. This would later be followed by the #A4challange in 2016, in which women compare the size of their waists to the width of a standard A4 sheet of paper. Psychologist Amy Ahern, concluded in her 2008 research paper ‘Internalisation of the Ultra-Thin Ideal’, that “making positive associations with underweight fashion models is associated with elevated drive for thinness, a cardinal symptom in eating disorders”. Highlighting the dangers associated with the current trend for thinness.
The concern over ‘heroin chic’ gaining in popularity again is a particularly recent development from news outlets, with most articles hailing its return only dating back to mid 2021. Many of the behaviours and aesthetics associated with the heroin chic trend have recently re-appeared, Beat (Eating Disorders Association) announced that hospital admissions for people with eating disorders in England have risen 84% in the past five years, and in February 2021 The New York Times published the article ‘Dark Under-Eye Circles? The Kids Say It’s Cool’, in reference to the TikTok makeup trend of accentuating ones under eye bags to purposefully look tired and hollowed out. During December 2022 there was also a barrage of articles surrounding the removal of buccal fat, which has recently become a popular trend amongst celebrities as a method of having a more sculpted and gaunt looking face. The newsletter Opulent Tips, created by fashion news director at Harper’s Bazaar, Rachel Tashjian, explained a “growing sense of unease” among industry peers at what could be a potential backlash to ‘body positivity’. She observed that despite some steps forwards towards inclusivity, “just as often, the models look thinner than ever”. This backlash has been, by some, accounted to the recent resurgence of 2000’s fashion trends most commonly seen worn by thin bodies in media, like low rise jeans and baby tees, however deeper at the core of the issue itself could perhaps be accredited to the false perception of beauty created by the conformity of plastic surgery and the overuse of editing software on social media and within advertisement, which has created a false or skewed illusion of appearance.
What many publications have also noted is the similarity in aesthetics between the former heroin chic trend and the most recent fashion trend on social media, ‘Succubus chic’. This aesthetic, popularised by influencer Gabbriette (seen in figure 6), arrives with the shift away from the focus on wellness and what was known as the ‘clean girl’ look. Dazed Beauty categorised this new trend as "Wednesday Addams if she grew up, got a job in Milan and picked up a coke habit…Cheeks hollow and cheekbones prominent”. What’s concerning about trends such as ‘succubus chic’ becoming marketable is due to the fact that fashion at it’s core is used to create an idealistic image of certain lifestyles to promote products, altering how these lifestyles are perceived. With the influence social media has on our society today, this creates an accessible pathway for trends to pass through our everyday lives, therefore this popularisation of trends closely associated with heroin chic could have lasting and damaging effects on the people that consume these images, most often young impressionable minds.
In contradiction to this, despite the exposure of these trends, there have still been many examples of more body positive content in mainstream media within the past year. Examples of this can be seen in the use of plus size model Precious Lee for the April 2022 edition of US Elle magazine, as well as the Spring 2022 runway for Valentino, which according to the show notes, was imagined on “not one single and idealised house model, but on a variety of women with different body frames and ages.” With the ultimate goal being to “create a canon that reflects the richness and diversity of the contemporary world and promoting an idea of beauty that is not absolute”. This indicates that the industry has, at least partially, opened up to a growing cross section of people and embrace an inclusive view of the fashionable body. This is likely because with the ever growing popularity of mass social media, opinions have become democratised, and therefore so have societies standards of beauty. You can still find promotion of skinniness on social media, however apps have begun to try to restrict content that glorifies eating disorders. TikTok for example, has blocked the search term “heroin chic”, under the premise that it violates content guidelines, in addition to this, searching the term “thinspo” on the app now redirects you to resources such as the National Eating Disorder Association. However these precautions existing do suggest that young people were searching these terms initially to create the need for this change.
In her paper ‘From Dirty Realism to Heroin Chic’, Jenna Ledford explains that “fashion and the reactions it spawns are often indicators of larger cultural issues”, exploring the idea that heroin chic was a result of Generation X’s desire for authenticity in fashion photography due to the fact that “the fantasy of 1980s fashion imagery did not suit the sense of hopelessness of this generation”. By reflecting on the times current issues of opioid addiction, recession and economic austerity, fashion became a type of realism, leading to an overall embrace of nihilism and dishevelment that became so called ‘chic’. For this reason, Heroin chic was seen as an antithesis to the presentation of traditional fashion and a way to reject its usual constraints, much like the anti fashion movements of grunge and riot grrrl. Therefore it could be argued that a resurgence of this trend, perhaps under the guise of ‘indie sleaze’ or any of it’s many iterations, was potentially inevitable as a response to the hyper-filtered culture of influencers as well as the declining economic state of society, as economists warn of an upcoming recession during the beginning of 2023. It should also be noted that the current iteration of what is being dubbed by media outlets as the new wave of heroin chic, conflates the trend as simply an aesthetic, ignoring the link to the current opioid crisis and its past.
This also directly correlates the emerging trend of the term ‘dissociative feminism’, coined by Emmeline Clein in 2019, on social media sites such as TikTok. What is predominantly seen as a push back of the online focused fourth wave feminism of the 2010s, dissociative feminism is the romanticisation of self destruction and embracing of ones mental illness, usually for aesthetic purposes, parallel to the glamorisation of drugs and fragile looking bodies seen in the 1990s and supporting Professor Christine Harold's ideas in, “Tracking Heroin Chic: The Abject Body Reconfigures the Rational Argument", in which Harold claims heroin chic was a “challenge to dominant standards of beauty by embracing and repeating images that transgress and thus reconfigure these standards. By privileging "ugly" rather than "beautiful" or "sickly" rather than “healthy,". It could be suggested that body positivity as a movement never went deep enough into the root of the issue to create an impact, as responsibility to assert positivity was aimed at the individual rather than combating the sexism, fat-phobia, racism and classism that led to the unhealthy relationship that an individual had with their body, similar to the ‘girl boss’ feminism of the 2010s-rejected by the dissociative feminist movement-allowing the internalisation of what is know as the ‘thin ideal’ to continue thriving. It could also be suggested that the abrupt fixation on thinness within the media is perhaps a result of what is known as post pandemic eugenics. There is an increased value placed upon those who portray certain traits over others, placing different values on people’s lives using arbitrary definitions of quality of life, and treat people who are disabled, overweight or elderly differently based on those imposed values. These values are often elevated after events such as the recent Coronavirus Pandemic, as those who survived become more invested in their health and are sometimes seen by society as genetically superior in certain ways. As thinness is often attributed to a healthy body type, this could be another explanation of why extreme thinness seems to be coming back into the zeitgeist.
To conclude, it seems the move towards the use of more diverse bodies in the fashion media could be viewed as less of a permanent change. Journalist Tyler McCall has noted now, “dressing one or two approved fat celebrities in custom clothing is a way to be involved in the inclusivity conversation in a topical, tokenistic fashion.” Moschino for example, has dressed singer Lizzo on several occasions, however it is impossible to find their clothes at a size above a 16 in the UK. In practice most of these brands still don’t offer an inclusive range at retail, indicating that at the root of the issue there is still much to be done when it comes to body inclusively being viewed as the standard in fashion and not only as an advertising technique and a method in which brands can co-opt the body positivity movement, rendering it meaningless. This could also be an indication that extreme skinniness as an ideal was never necessarily out of trend within the fashion industry, further perpetuating the socially defined ideals of what is considered beautiful and continuing an exception that associates positive attributes solely with thinness.
The continuous cycle of fashion, culture and how they inform each another allows us to retrospectively draw parallels between them. Attitudes towards body standards and ideals change decade to decade, however the overall expectations of how we present our body tend to remain. The impact of the recent global economic state and the rejection of overly retouched and perfected fuelled media could be the clearest indications that the concerns over the next cycle of fashion returning once again in favour of the extremely thin is not simply media hysteria but an emerging symptom of the current societal climate. However as the culture shifts, as it always does, and the fashion industry moves onto the next trend, progress towards inclusivity will likely prevail again.