Content Warning: This article discusses body image, eating disorders, and weight stigma as it relates to the “skinny trend.” It includes examples of media trends and imagery for the purpose of analysis and critique.

Skinny is Trending Again: The Dangerous Impact on Mental Health

If you grew up in the early 2000’s, you probably remember being absolutely bombarded by images of super thin artists, models, and film stars. You might also remember how tabloids would constantly attack and degrade women for their perceived “failures” maintaining a slender body type. It was relentless and utterly cruel. It also sent a very clear message to young women; there is a correct way to look, and deviating from that negates your value and makes you a target for ridicule.

The Body Positivity Movement

In the 2010s, we began seeing changes in the conversation around thinness. Women on social media started challenging the beauty standards they grew up with. They shared their unedited photos, talked about their body image more openly, and challenged the idea that their worth was contingent on weight. The body positivity movement was a direct response to decades of shame and invisibilization. The message was loud and clear: people of all sizes deserve dignity.

This movement wasn’t perfect. At times, the message became oversimplified and commodified. Complex and nuanced topics related to body image and health became two-dimensionalized into catchy slogans. As it entered the mainstream, many of its original participants were sidelined and goals were diluted and redirected by brands and influencers who were antsy to profit off of its popularity. Fitness coaches and wellness companies eagerly adopted the language of body positivity. Many transformed it into a “marketable lifestyle” focused around consumption and individual optimization.

Still, despite the bumps along the way, the body positivity movement did make meaningful changes in the cultural zeitgeist. For the first time in a long time, mainstream conversations went against the message that skinny equaled beauty, happiness, or self-worth. Women were encouraged to view their bodies with more compassion instead of constant scrutiny, and a bigger range of body types began to appear in pop culture. Even if the movement fell short of all of its goals, it did help create space for conversations about body image and self-acceptance.

The Beauty Standard We Thought We’d Left Behind

In the past few years, however, we’ve begun to see a familiar, albeit sneakier shift. I’m hearing my clients (especially those who are young women) speaking about how thinness seems to be consuming every part of their lives more and more. From their friend groups, to their gyms, to their timelines. While thinness never really left it’s post as the dominant beauty ideal, it’s popped up in a more extreme way.

In this article, I’ll break down the following topics:

• The Skinny Trend is making a disturbing comeback
• Ariana Grande and the public conversation about celebrity bodies
• #SkinnyTok– How social media thinness influences body image
• Building a healthier relationship with your body

By the end of the article, you’ll have a better understanding of how current beauty trends are shaping body ideals, how these messages run through celebrity culture and social media, and what it means to critically engage with them in a way that protects your relationship with your own body

The Skinny Trend is Making a Disturbing Comeback

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My toned, slender workout

Skinny seems to be trending again, and it’s eerily different from its earlier iterations. While the early 2000s were riddled with weight loss ads and explicit messages that “skinny is good,” in 2026, trends seem to be flying a lot more under the radar.

What makes this moment feel different is not just the visibility of skinniness itself, but the way it’s being remarketed. It’s no longer “heroin chic,” it’s “disciplined,” “clean,” or “wellness-oriented.” While there is nothing inherently wrong with “tracking your macros” or “getting Pilates arms”, these trends tend to focus on particular body presentations that align with this larger moment. Thinness is being rebranded through language that feels neutral, even virtuous. You’re not trying to be skinny, you’re trying to be “healthy,” “toned,” “consistent,” or “that girl.”

The issue is that the underlying message is the same. If you’re scrolling social media for long enough, the same images appear; smaller waists, leaner frames, strict eating and exercise patterns. The intent seems less malicious, but the effect is just as strong.

It’s important to note that these trends are happening alongside rising anxiety about control, health, productivity, and identity. Thinness has become a “point of evidence” that everything else is also “in order.”

Ariana Grande and the Public Conversation About Celebrity Bodies

The public’s relationship with thinness can be very clearly revealed in the way we talk about celebrities’ bodies. Ariana Grande is one of the most recent examples of how quickly public attention can shift when a body becomes visibly smaller. Almost overnight, timelines filled with commentary; some framed as concern, some as criticism, many others as admiration.

Let’s make something clear; this is not about Ariana Grande as an individual, nor is it about reducing a complex person to a single narrative about her body. She exists within the same cultural system as we do; one that constantly rewards thinness, dissects women’s appearances, and turns bodies into public conversation. The point is not to single her out, but the opposite; she has become a highly visible example of a broader shift. A shift in which extremely thin body types have become increasingly common among celebrities and influencers. The goal is to name the fact that bodies of women in the public eye have pushed the Overton Window of what’s considered healthy or desirable.

We do not want to overlook how normalized extremely thin bodies become within our cultural imagination. We have become more and more used to seeing very small frames presented as aspirational, toned, or simply “normal.” Fashion, media, and online spaces make thinness go unquestioned. Because of this, shifts toward thinner appearances are not always read as unusual or concerning in a structural sense, but instead as something to comment on in aesthetic or moral terms. Media outlets begin to call extreme thinness, “elegant” or “being toned.”

The Cost of Silence

Talking about women’s bodies in an objectifying or judgmental sense is undoubtedly problematic, but it’s also important to acknowledge that staying silent on the very public emerging skinny trend entirely is detrimental. Especially when this trend shape the ways girls and women look at their own bodies. The “hush hush” attitude around increasingly extreme presentations of thinness doesn’t help anyone.

When this normalization goes unspoken, it goes unchallenged. It has more influence over what kinds of bodies we see as ordinary, virtuous, or disciplined. This normalization exists, right now, in public life, and allowing it to go unexplained does not help the masses that consume it.

#SkinnyTok– How Social Media Thinness Influences Body Image

If celebrity culture is the spark, social media is the gasoline that sets fire to the skinny trend and turns it into something constant and algorithmically all-consuming. #SkinnyTok isn’t a single trend, but a category of content focused around thinness as the ideal. As previously discussed, it, too, is inundated in language that appears neutral, but is a dog whistle for something more pointed. It’s very common to see words like wellness, routine, discipline, or self-improvement used. Although the hashtag has been banned by TikTok, the content continues to exist.

It’s easy to get caught up in it, too. A lot of it blends smoothly into the usual scrolling: Pilates routines, grocery hauls, “what I eat in a day” videos, morning routines, lifestyle check-ins. But patterns become clear quickly. Certain bodies are framed as proof of control, consistency, and “clean living,” while others are simply absent or only appear as the “befores” in transformation stories.

What’s so insidious is how quickly it happens. Engagement with even loosely related content can quickly narrow a feed into a highly specific visual environment where skinny becomes the only aesthetic outcome of “healthy living.” Over time, this creates visual conditioning. Thinness becomes “naturally” associated with discipline, attractiveness, and self-worth, even when it is never explicitly named.

On top of that, unlike earlier media systems, where exposure to particular bodies was confined to fewer spaces, social media completely weaves them into the fabric of everyday life. They appear between friends, memes, recipes. Social media makes these images harder to separate from ordinary reality. This muddling makes comparison even more intense. It’s no longer reserved for magazines or red carpets, it’s omnipresent and tailored specifically to you.

When the Ideal Becomes the Default

The result is not just exposure, but normalization through repetition. And once a visual standard becomes normalized, it becomes harder to recognize it as a standard at all. The skinny trend’s exposure eventually leads to its invisibility.

This is far from harmless; research shows how social media use is connected to eating concerns in young people. In one study, folks that had high usage rates of social media that focused on “thin ideal” content reported lower body appreciation and greater fears of negative appearance evaluation. Another study found that this is a global issue; 55% of young people on social media are dissatisfied with their bodies.

Building a Healthier Relationship with Your Body

In a media environment like this, the goal cannot simply be to “avoid comparison” or disconnect entirely. That’s not realistic or sustainable. The work needs to be recognizing how comparison is being produced in the first place.

A better relationship with your body begins by noticing what certain content is doing to your self-perception. Not all discomfort is random; sometimes it is a signal that you are absorbing an unhealthy standard that is being quietly reinforced rather than explicitly stated. Let’s discuss what we can do to build a healthier sense of self.

1. Notice your triggers

Pay attention to what kinds of posts affect your mood, self-image, or thought patterns. Instead of criticizing yourself for reacting, treat it as information. Certain content formats (like body checks, “what I eat in a day,” or transformation videos) are designed to invite comparison.

2. Moderate your feed

If you notice content that leaves you feeling worse about your body, don’t just scroll past it, use the platform tools. Hiding, muting, or marking content as “not interested” actually changes what the algorithm shows you over time. The goal isn’t perfection, but reducing repeated exposure to the same narrow body ideals.

3. Set social media limits

Constant exposure intensifies comparison, even when you’re aware of it. Setting time limits, creating screen-free periods (like mornings or before bed), or removing apps from your home screen can reduce automatic scrolling. Even small boundaries can make a noticeable difference in how often body-focused content enters your day. Research shows that spending 50% less time on social media for just a few weeks meaningfully improves how teens and young adults feel about their weight and overall appearance.

4. Moderate what you consume

Follow accounts that expand your feed instead of narrowing it. That can include body diversity creators, but it can also include non-appearance-focused fitness accounts, artists, educators, or content that has nothing to do with bodies at all.

5. Reframe what “health” means

Try separating health from appearance. Health is not always visible, and thinness is not a reliable indicator of wellbeing. Expanding your definition to include energy, strength, rest, mood, and stress levels helps weaken the automatic link between body size and value.

6. Interrupt comparison spirals

When you catch yourself comparing, try redirecting attention to something mindful and immediate like your breath, posture, surroundings, or what your body is doing in that moment. The goal isn’t to suppress comparison but to break its momentum.

7. Reduce body-checking behaviours

This can include mirror checking, pinching, posing, or repeatedly evaluating how your body looks in different clothes or angles. These behaviours reinforce anxiety loops. Reducing them (even gradually) can help ease some of the constant self-monitoring.

8. Seek offline anchors

This is a huge one. Spend time doing things where the body is not the focus. Hobbies, movement for enjoyment, time with friends, or creative activities can help anchor your sense of self outside of appearance.

Added Support

If you’re struggling with body image, you don’t have to deal with it alone. When patterns are all around us, they can feel extremely difficult to step out of.

Therapy can be a space to slow down, make sense of the messages we’re consuming, and rebuild a relationship with your body that feels less reactive.

If you’re looking for support, you can book a free 15-minute consultation where we can talk about what you need and see whether it feels like the right fit.

Please note: If you’re currently struggling with an active eating disorder, you’re deserving of specialized support. While I work with body image concerns, anxiety, and related challenges, eating disorders require a more comprehensive level of care than I provide. I encourage you to connect with an eating disorder specialist or program that can offer the appropriate therapeutic, nutritional, and medical support. Resources such as Sheena’s Place and NEDIC can help you find care and explore treatment options.