The 2000s were full of skinny jeans, trucker hats, layered tank tops and body shaming. The late 1990s and early 2000s popularized a thinner frame and coined the look “heroin chic.”
The fun fashion trends were paired with an obsessive diet culture. This culture normalized body shaming and critique on full display from media outlets that freely commented on female celebrities’ bodies. Now, the 2000s are coming back, and the culture is coming with it.
Fashion typically follows a 20-year cycle where trends from the past come back into the fold. With the rise of microtrends on platforms like TikTok and Instagram, fashion trend cycles are getting shorter, but overarching themes still shine through.
2000s staples like low-rise jeans have been online more and more over the past couple of months. The style is associated with a skinnier figure, one that fits into brands like Brandy Melville, a one-size-fits-all brand commonly called online “one size fits small.” When fashion trends resurface, cultural ones are sometimes close behind.
The 2000s created a harmful diet culture obsessed with skinnier frames, promoting dangerous fitness and nutrition trends in the name of achieving the perfect body for skinny jeans and low-rise shorts. However, the current body trends might not be much better. The body positive movement and fat acceptance movement have roots in advocacy for inclusion in public policy, tracing back to the 1960s. However, pockets of these movements have been co-opted on social media to advocate for remaining in unhealthy cycles rather than self-love and acceptance.
After the 2000s and 2010s, the movement known as body positivity exploded on social media, promoting body acceptance and intuitive eating. The movement advocated for more inclusive sizing at clothing retailers, preaching self-acceptance and self-love.
Another movement known as the fat acceptance movement online grew out of the body positive community. They advocated for self-love and argued that health at every size could be possible. Both movements have been around for decades, but were originally much more involved in policy reform issues.
Now, critics of the online factions of the movements say they’ve gone too far in the opposite direction, citing the growing obesity rate in the United States, with two in five adults in the U.S. being obese.
The response online to these movements and slight overcorrection has been a reversion to toxic mindsets. TikTok communities like “SkinnyTok” are eerily similar to the early days of pro-eating disorder blogs. They glamorize sayings like “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” and have popularized terms like “big back.”
The culture around fashion and diet is constantly shifting. It wasn’t long ago that the brand Victoria’s Secret faced public backlash for glamorizing thinner bodies through their marketing and advertising, sizing and their iconic fashion shows. However, when Victoria’s Secret came back with a new approach to their shows, people online were asking for the old production to come back with comments critiquing the appearance and the models.
The 2000s gave us iconic brands and trends that still influence many people’s style today. It also gave us platforms like pro-eating disorder blogs and dangerous diet culture trends. Fashion trends are bound to come back, and some of them should. I love a good low-rise flare jean, but we can do without the food and body shaming or unattainable beauty standards.
Rose Woelm is a philosophy and journalism double major. Reach her at rosewoelm@dailynebraskan.com
