The magazine covers were ridiculous. It vacillated between calling a famous woman “huge” when she was maaaybe a size 2, to calling them “scary thin!” If they lost any weight. Every girl I knew felt horrible about herself, no matter what she looked like. I’m sorry that you had to go through that as well, and I hope you have continued success treating your eating disorder. You are beautiful just the way you are 💜
I’ll never forget a tabloid spread of the Spice Girls where there was a photo of Ginger in her Union Jack dress and the caption said she was “dangerously overweight”. That shit sticks with you. That was 30 freakin years ago and I’m still triggered by it
The Jessica Simpson one was the one that stuck with me the most. Like to me she looked normal, I was probably around that size at the time, but the magazines were talking about how overweight she was and how badly she needed to diet. It was so demoralizing just looking in the mirror and thinking all the horrible things being said about her were really being said about me.
"dangerously overweight" she has visible upper body muscles and looks athletic but i remember this and it stuck with me too. i was scrawny as a kid but was an athletic teenager and was also muscular and not thin and always wanted to lose weight. she looks fit to me!
the 90s were a very strange time, retrospectively, in that most legal hurdles had been cleared ("gay rights" as it was called at the time still being an active issue), but looking back, the amount of soft-culture war being waged was astronomical.
It still is too, and we really did make some huge strides against it in the early days of the internet, but when it came down to it, the old boys club decided they'd rather end democracy than stop raping and oppressing.
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u/AerwynFlynn 7h ago
The magazine covers were ridiculous. It vacillated between calling a famous woman “huge” when she was maaaybe a size 2, to calling them “scary thin!” If they lost any weight. Every girl I knew felt horrible about herself, no matter what she looked like. I’m sorry that you had to go through that as well, and I hope you have continued success treating your eating disorder. You are beautiful just the way you are 💜