The 90s brought us Spice Girls, Friends, baggy jeans and many more wonderful things. However, it also brought us a particular really quite dangerous new body standard nicknamed "heroine chic". This involved being extremely skinny, having pale skin, stringy hair and dark circles under your eyes, all traits of a stereotypical heroine addict. Now, it should be obvious as to why this is not the most healthy of looks to be aiming towards, as many of the mentioned traits are also traits of anorexia, rates of it increasing from 39 to 44 percent in 1990.
 

This was an incredibly harmful "trend" in the 90s and 2000s, although it is regrettable to call it a trend as it's completely wrong for womens' bodies to be categorised as a trend in any sense.

 

The 2010s, luckily, saw a new body positivity movement being formed and a promotion of a more curvy body type that in the 2000s would have been ridiculed, and so the heroine chick body type died in favour of a generally healthier one. A prime example of the 2010's ideal body type is Kim Kardashian, who was - and remains to be - a huge influence not only to the fashion industry, but to her millions of mostly teenage fans.

 

It is for those reasons that we should be worried about a potential comeback of heroine chic that has already started to appear in the media. Recently, many of the Kardashians, infamous for their curvy bodies, have had surgeries removed to make them look skinnier, as well as there being rises in toxic mentalities that tell people that being skinner is being prettier, which should lead to potential worry about what the future holds for beauty trends and whether we're only taking steps backwards.

 

Kim Kardashian herself has talked about her experience of losing a massive amount of weight in a short amount of time to fit into Marilyn Monroe's dress for the Met gala months ago and has presented the experience as something amazing rather as something unpleasant. For this, she has had a mixed response with some people worried for her, and some accusing her of promoting and glamorising eating disorders. One social media user Bethan Turner said that it is "irresponsible for her to put such damaging ideas on social media, especially when she knows he has such a huge following".

 

Either way, it begs a question of whether we should be scared about what's being promoted on social media and encourages you to think carefully about your body and how what you do affects it.