Thin has always been in, despite BBL culture coming and going. Since day one of our lives, the media has drilled into little girl’s heads that being thin is the epitome of femininity. American Television shows geared towards young girls in their most impressionable ages push the statement that being a woman means to be thin. Shows such as Monster High, Barbie, and Disney Princess Movies all have characters that have ultra thin long bodies and thigh gaps and hollowy faces. The ‘pretty’ girls that have luscious blonde hair and are wanted by all the guys in the show are all super skinny, and the ‘masculine’ girls like sports are all bigger sized and considered unattractive. To this day, despite changes to our calendars, the characters' bodies have not changed. Kim Possible’s pants still dont fit and the thin dolls are the ones that sell. 

Despite the negative products that this type of media produces, American media isn't in a rush to fix it. So as young women’s bodies grow, they find unnatural ways to preserve this ‘youth and femininity’ and the general media, pageant, and fashion industry continue to promote this body type. Clothing stores for teens such Hot Topic and Urban Outfitters are ranked as some of the worst size-inclusive clothing brands. According to the blog Pretty Inclusive, Urban Outfitters has a large controversy regarding their lack of size range and plus size clothing stating, “Urban Outfitters rank as the worst for their variety of plus-size dresses (1%)....With just one out of 546 dresses available online above a size 14.” But the brand that continues to get backlash and support in the same breath is the notorious Brandy Melliville. The brand is deemed toxic because of allegations of racism, anti semitism, and sexual misconduct (InStyle). The apparent red flags with the brand started to go off in consumers' minds with the store’s clothing all being “One size fits All” to “One size fits most” to now just being labeled ‘small’ or ‘cropped fit’ on their website. The company searches for today’s latest fashion trends young women and empties them into the store for an inexpensive price, this excites young women and makes them want to be able to wear the clothing despite the company's obvious unhealthy promotion of this unattainable thinness in the name of “look[ing] unique in it and also to keep[ing] manufacturing costs down”. (NovelMag)

Brandy Meliville and Urban Outfitter is the only clothing store that is in love with thin. The fashion industry and large name fashion companies have only really been looking for thin tall models since their beginning. They don't hide it either. Esteemed modeling agency 'Wilhelmina Models’ proudly presents their models' stats on their website, and a brief hover will show you that the model’s waist size never really goes over 24 inches. These are the people being booked and some models have come out to say that during the entirety of fashion week, they only ate a pack of saltines. People became obsessed with the Victoria Secret Angel diet and workouts during quarantine (the harmful avoidance of COVID 15), striving to be like these ultrathin models. YouTubers such as Chloe Ting now receive backlash because of how her workouts and these very restrictive diets resulted in numerous health concerns for young girls trapped in their homes.

What does all of this lead to? Eating disorders. PolarisTeen states that “90% of teens with anorexia are female” and in the same article states, “69% of females (ages 10 to 18) state that photographs of models and celebrities in the media motivated their “ideal” body shape.” This directly proves that the media is in control in situations like this. Because these teens will do anything to look like what the media deems attractive, they look to outside sources when bulimia isn't working. They resort to drug abuse.

Heroin was a big thing in the 90s when the media was dispensing thin models on their runways consistently. The term ‘Heroin Chic’ was a large aesthetic/lifestyle that according to Britannica is, “an extremely thin physique paired with pale skin, dark undereye circles, and often disheveled hair and clothing.” The term was coined after the overdose of photographer Davide Sorrenti, which is what caused the slow end to the despicable trend. The faces of the trend included Gia Carangi, Kate Moss, and Jamie King and Calvin Klein was heading the campaign. Heroin became easy to obtain and easier to use, as users no longer needed to inject it into their bloodstream and shifted to the convenience of snorting. Everyone was using heroin, the rich, the poor, and everyone in between. The ease of the drug made the stigma decrease and caused it to be normalized in society and media. Media such as famed movies Pulp Fiction and Permanent Midnight also promoted drug use because of the causal abuse of drugs portrayed in the films. Proving once more how the media plays an important role as to how people choose to live their lives. The addictive drug had contributed to the death of many, including famous musician Kurt Cobain. The trend was so out of hand that President Bill Clinton commented on it by calling it ‘destructive’. People truly believed that by snorting this harmful drug into their bodies, they would achieve the desirable body at the time. Due to some of the side effects, it's understandable why this would be their logic. According to Blue Ridge Mountain Recovery, the side effects of heroin include loss of appetite, difficulty swallowing, nausea, vomiting, body weakness, and depression. All these aspects could also lead to the thin bodies that the media was portraying.

Though the glamorization of heroin chic has decreased, it is now geared toward nicotine and cocaine. Vapes are easily accessible and attractive to today’s teens (being very popular amongst college students) because of all the vibrant colors and candy-like names associated with them. Truth-Initiative states that by mid 2022, 800,000 American teens vaped for the first time. On social media, teens have become desensitized to the dangers of vapes and actually have created communities to fault their ‘relatable addiction.’ Sciencedirect has found a correlation between eating disorders and vaping. Stating, “Among the sample, 19.0% of participants reported vaping or e-cigarette use in the past 30 days, 3.7% self-reported any lifetime eating disorder diagnosis, and 25.0% were at elevated risk for an eating disorder. Vaping or e-cigarette use was associated with higher odds of all eating disorder measures, including the self-reported lifetime eating disorder diagnosis items (any diagnosis, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge-eating disorder) and elevated eating disorder risk…” PubMed found a connection between young women, cocaine, and eating disorders. They report that almost half of the women using cocaine used the drug as a weight control measure. 72% of the women that used cocaine for that reason had a currently diagnosed eating disorder. Drug abuse and thinness are appealing to young women and they are noticing a correlation between the two. Because of how easy it is now to get ahold of drugs, there is no one to stop them and no one is really telling them that their bodies are attractive. The media pushes drug abuse and an unhealthy view of bodies, they made this lifestyle famous.

Though the times have changed and so has the media, their message remains the same. People have no problem body checking others and giving their unsolicited commentary. Magazines giving their ‘10 ways to lose weight..fast’. The media feeds the narrative that being skinny is attractive and drills it into the minds of young girls from the minute they switch on their TVs that you have to be thin to be beautiful, and then as they arise in their youth they introduce drugs. Thin has imprinted its foot in the media, through social media now. The coquette aesthetic trending on social media is very similar to the heroin chic lifestyle, except now with vapes. They romanticize and strive for that thin body and openly support non-inclusive brands simply because, “The clothes are too cute.” The media continues to push this narrative through the use of thinspo (especially in the context of anorexia nervosa used in reference to media that serves as motivation for a person seeking to maintain a very low body weight)  which is very easy to find on apps such as Tumblr, TikTok, and Twitter; all which are heavily used by today’s youth. Despite today’s headlines, thin was always in, thin never left.