Everywhere you turn, people are shrinking. From Ariana Grande\u2019s visible sternum on the Wicked red carpet, to Emma Stone\u2019s pronounced shoulders at this year\u2019s Baftas, bone has become the beauty standard<\/a>, and while I spent half a decade in recovery, a healthy weight<\/a>, and more than happy with how I looked, there\u2019s now an overwhelming feeling that I\u2019m somehow in the wrong; that I should look emaciated, too. <\/p>\n I\u2019m not alone in these thoughts. On TikTok, users have coined the resurgence of what was dubbed \u201cheroin chic\u201d in the Nineties \u201cskinny epidemic\u201d. \u201cWhat\u2019s more terrifying this time around is that it\u2019s encouraging young people to take medicine in order to achieve this kind of body,\u201d says 27-year-old content creator Grace Rosborough. \u201cBut it\u2019s an unhealthy body \u2013 and an unhealthy way to achieve it.\u201d <\/p>\n In the 2010s, it was a thing among teenage girls to browse so-called \u201cthinspo\u201d (thin inspiration) content on microblogging sites like Tumblr. Around 2012, the body positivity movement largely stamped that out, with creators instead posting pictures with captions like \u201cstrong, not skinny\u201d as they promoted muscle growth and protein shakes rather than thigh gaps and clavicles. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve seen a lot of body positive creators sharing that they\u2019ve lost a lot of weight,\u201d says Rosborough of the return of thinspo to social media. \u201cI don\u2019t want to say they\u2019ve gone against what they created a platform for, but it\u2019s very obviously taken a turn.\u201d<\/p>\n Rosborough decided to make a video speaking out against thinspiration on TikTok after she unintentionally became it herself. \u201cI wasn\u2019t trying to lose weight at all. I was just going through a really rough time,\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s what made it even scarier. Why was I so well liked when I was essentially killing myself? Then it makes you think, \u2018Do I stay skinny to be liked? Or do I actually make myself healthy again?\u2019 It\u2019s terrifying. The algorithm will always push diet culture videos every once in a while, even if you scroll past them. It\u2019s a big mental game with yourself to keep telling your brain, \u2018that is not what I should look like.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n In the 2010s, I allowed these thoughts to push me towards disordered eating and bulimia. Today, I\u2019ve (thankfully) had enough cognitive behavioural therapy and counselling to tell my internal monologue off like a child and apologise to myself. Still, that doesn\u2019t make the self-deprecation any less draining. I want the voice to go quiet again. But it\u2019s hard when thinness is everywhere \u2013 and the visibility of regular bodies is diminishing at a disturbing rate. Just 15 per cent of UK TV and digital adverts featured diverse body types in 2025, for example. This is almost half of the 28 per cent recorded in 2024. Where will we be by 2030? <\/p>\n \u201cComparative thinking is so common in eating disorders,\u201d says Deanne Jade, psychologist and director of the National Centre for Eating Disorders. \u201cIt\u2019s like having a poisoned parrot on your shoulder that tells you that you\u2019re not good enough. But having poor body image is now normal in our society. There are so many ostensibly beautiful or [so-called] \u2018perfectly slim\u2019 people out there \u2013 and you\u2019re directed to them every single day on the TV, on social media, wherever, that people stigmatise themselves all the time. We need to press a reset button.\u201d <\/p>\n Sana Khwaja, therapist for BetterHelp, recommends taking a moment to consider whose voice your poison parrot is mimicking. \u201cAsk yourself, \u2018whose voice is that? Where has it come from? Where have I heard it before?\u201d she says. \u201cIt could be your friend, mum, auntie \u2013 or even a conversation between cast members on The Kardashians where they\u2019re all sat there with their salads and Scott Disick is opening his fridge full of Mounjaro. It\u2019s become part of a lifestyle that\u2019s being sold to us \u2013 that this is what we should be doing.\u201d<\/p>\n There are friends I\u2019m struggling to spend time with because they\u2019ve dropped dozens of kilos out of the blue. Looking at them, I feel a strange mixture of deep concern, spiky jealousy and intense shame<\/p>\n Jade\u2019s first tip is to simply stop looking if you can. \u201cWhen you\u2019ve become very well practised at not approving of yourself, you become like an addict for the very thing that\u2019s driving you insane,\u201d she says. \u201cThere\u2019s no difference between people who\u2019re taking drugs and alcohol and whatever media you\u2019re endlessly drawn to. So, you\u2019ve got to make this decision. If this is contributing to your angst, can you stop doing it?\u201d<\/p>\n Khwaja concurs: \u201cOn TV, we see jarring content in short bursts, then we go back to our normal life and see normal people with regular bodies at the spa or in the supermarket or at the gym. Whereas it\u2019s constantly on our phones. We need to be mindful of our feeds and get rid of the things that don\u2019t make us feel good. Then, get out into the real world and realise that nobody looks like those pictures \u2013 even the people in the pictures.\u201d<\/p>\n Eating disorders are famously competitive. So, sufferers or those in recovery can often get triggered by someone close to them losing weight \u2013 whether by Ozempic<\/a> or natural means. In recent months, there have been friends I\u2019m ashamed to say that I\u2019ve struggled to spend time with because they\u2019ve dropped dozens of kilos out of the blue. Looking at them, I feel a strange mixture of deep concern, spiky jealousy and intense shame.<\/p>\n Khwaja says there\u2019s no point ignoring those feelings \u2013 even if you\u2019re deeply embarrassed by them. \u201cYou have to be super honest,\u201d she says. \u201cThere\u2019s no such thing as a bad feeling. It\u2019s OK that we feel envy, judgement, or upset. Don\u2019t deny those feelings. They give you room to look at what your core beliefs (\u2018people won\u2019t love me unless I look like that\u2019) are telling you versus the actual truth about your friends and family.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI treated one lovely woman who worked with someone who was losing a significant amount of weight,\u201d recalls Jade. \u201cI asked her how she felt about it and she said, \u2018I want to break both of her legs\u2019. But the thing is, you have to be careful who you envy. I used to be jealous of a close friend who had three children and was a size six within a week of giving birth. I was so envious. Then she died of breast cancer when she was 38.\u201d<\/p>\n Recent studies have found that those using weight-loss jabs are likely to regain two-thirds of the weight they lose within a year of stopping<\/a> the medication. Simultaneously, some users have reported losing their sight and suffering from extreme vomiting while on the drugs. In 2024, one Californian woman, Marsha Ettinghoff, 76, died six months after she started taking Ozempic<\/a>. \u201cI didn’t think that she needed it, but she wanted to be on it,\u201d her husband, who\u2019s suing the company, said this month. <\/p>\n \u201cComparison is a very specific kind of hell,\u201d reflects Jade. \u201cI tell patients to take a breath and say, \u2018stop, I\u2019m OK the way I am\u2019. If you practise that, it won\u2019t feel true in the beginning \u2013 or even the first 30 times you say it \u2013 but the 50th time it\u2019ll become more true. So, you can hear that voice saying you don\u2019t look good enough, but eventually it will matter a little bit less. It\u2019s the muttering that\u2019s the problem \u2013 not so much the body.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544116,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[102,6591,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-544115","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-medication","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u2018I want the voice to go quiet again. But it\u2019s hard when thinness is everywhere \u2013 and the visibility of regular bodies is diminishing at a disturbing rate\u2019 (The Independent)<\/p>\n
![\"Cassie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Screenshot-2026-04-17-at-15-50-44.png\")
Cassie struggles with her body image in \u2018Euphoria\u2019 (HBO)<\/p>\n![\"Scott](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Screenshot-2026-04-17-at-15-52-47.png\")
Scott Disick with a fridge full of Mounjaro in \u2018The Kardashians\u2019 (Disney+)<\/p>\n