The return of low rise jeans and miniskirts last year was a harbinger of another imminent comeback. Thin is, once again, back in folks. Whether it be on catwalks or in campaigns, fashion has been all clavicles, concave stomachs and visible hip bones as of late.
Many have hypothesized the return as part of a backlash to the body positivity movement, as well as the prominence of the Brazilian butt lift (BBL) in popular culture and beauty, popularised most famously by Kim Kardashian and her siblings. And now the Kardashians, canaries in the coal mine for modern day beauty standards, have seemingly had their procedures undone, proving the era’s end in the minds of many. Lorry Hill, a vlogger who frankly discusses plastic surgery trends on her channel, uploaded a now viral video dissecting Kim and Khloe’s shrinking frames. She speculated that they had their BBLs revised and reduced, in what is referred to as a “country club BBL”. “The Reign of the Slim-Thick Influencer is OVER”, the title declared.
The end of that reign has been met with a sigh of relief for some women who aren’t naturally built like Nicki Minaj or unwilling to undergo the notoriously dangerous surgical procedures in order to be. The dangers of the BBL are well documented. A medical report in 2017 stated that it has a mortality rate of 1 in 3,000 patients, making it one of the most deadly cosmetic surgery procedures in the world. Still, understandably, some women are frustrated to see backs turn on the aesthetic, feeling it was more inclusive than the previously held standard of thinness.
“Some women are happy to see the BBL trend ‘end’ because they enjoyed the privilege of slim bodies being the most desired,” journalist Chloe Sih tweeted recently. “Curvy bodies becoming more celebrated takes away from that power. It reaffirms their internalized fatphobic belief that slim bodies are respectable and timeless.”
Whilst there is some truth in the tweet, the inverse is of course true, too: BBL bodies as a trend similarly reinforced the idea that women who are flat-chested, who are slim without being “slim thick” were not desirable. The issue is these body types being posited against each other; the whole point of reducing women’s bodies to trends is so that women have to duke it out. And whilst BBLs celebrate “curves”, it’s only ever been curves in the “right” places. Deposits of fat are welcome in bum cheeks; less so in the stomach. As a standard it was not any more inclusive, since standards by their very definition are exclusionary. One body type has to go out of fashion for another to come in; the huge boobs of the ’90s are replaced with the huge bums of the last decade, as if women’s bodies are able to contort and change of their own accord based on societal whims.
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