How did the 2000s fashion movement affect diet culture?

Image: self drawn

Trigger warning- this article speaks on themes such as diet culture, body image and distorted eating, please read at your own discretion. If any of the topics in this article have affected you or anyone you know, please visit www.beateatingdisorders.com. 

Low rise jeans, baby tees and bedazzled accessories; there’s no denying that the early 2000s was a cultural reset when it came to fashion. It was a fun and vibrant era, heavily inspired by pop culture, which didn’t shy away from cropped cuts, glitter and rhinestones on just about any and every article of clothing you could imagine.

Although the 2000s bought around a whole host of iconic looks, that on the surface seemed fun and trendy, there’s no denying that it helped fuel an unhealthy diet culture. Despite how ‘fun’ such looks may have been, when the designs were quite obviously made for thin bodies and were only being shown on skinny models and celebs in the media, it very much screamed 'if you're not thin, don't bother participating.'

Image via @parishilton on Instagram

Between 2000-2009, the rate of eating disorders in the UK for people aged 10-49, increased from 32.3% to 37.2%, according to the National Library of Medicine. Many believe that the role of fashion trends at the time and the way in which they were promoted had a vital role to play in this. 

In the early 2000s, being skinny was more than just a body type; it was an accessory- and a highly sort after one. Whilst anyone was free to wear such trends, many felt pieces were designed to flatter a thinner frame; with low-rise jeans and crop tops made to compliment flat stomachs, miniskirts favouring thin legs and bright colours drawing attention to every curve of a woman’s body.

Margaret McDonough, lecturer in fashion design at the University of Gloucestershire, believes that such designs helped promote a toxic diet culture, and how the trends were promoted in the media didn’t help matters. 
“The styling of some garments during the early 2000's did include cut away elements, cropped tops etc. and when these are mediated through fashion photography many of the models used were size zero or very thin and not reflective of the general population.” 

Studies published in the British Journal of Psychological Society have found that the clothes we wear very much affect the way we think, a theory they call 'enclothed cognition.'

They conducted a study where students performed a task with some wearing lab coats and some wearing their own clothes. They found that the students wearing lab coats made half as many errors than the others.

The researchers concluded that, “clothes can have profound and systematic psychological and behavioural consequences for their wearers,” and, “although the saying goes that clothes do not make the man, our results suggest they do hold a strange power over their wearers.”

Lexi Crouch, eating disorder practitioner and clinical nutritionist believes that the obsessive celebrity culture of the time contributed to a toxic diet culture. 

“I mean you’re looking at Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Richie, who all had that waif-thin, unrealistic appearance, but it was also a time before we had the likes of Instagram, so we just had exposure to celebrities, but they had some really dangerous, distorted dieting habits.” 

The media’s discourse around weight with celebrities in tabloids and magazines for example, hugely affected how people viewed themselves when it came to fashion; with headlines like ‘50 of the best and worst beach bodies’ and ‘Britney loses 15 pounds in just 4 weeks!’ being the norm. 

“I just think that whole movement back then was really stemmed by media and everything was focused on a celebrities weight; you wouldn’t hear about them per say, it was just you’d see a magazine cover that was slammed with ‘such and such has lost this many kilos’ it was like there was a shift where a whole lot of worth was being put into these dieting trends and of course the young people would see these celebrities as role models and got into really toxic dieting habits.” 

Instagram blogger Alysse has been posting plus size styling and body positivity content for over 2 years, growing an audience of over 18,000 followers. She grew up in the era of 2000s trends and felt that her body type was never represented in the media. 

(Image via @alwaysalysse on Instagram)

"I was born in the early 90s, so the media from age 0 to my late teens was very much Kate Moss and as I got a little bit older, Amy Winehouse, so the media representation on bigger women was like Dawn French and Vanessa Feltz, not ever being shown as super desirable, I guess. When you look at people who were the ‘main characters', like Kat Deeley, she was like stick thin and beautiful. Obviously there’s shows like Friends and there’s no fat people represented in these programmes which is not great to be honest.” 

This lack of representation and the constant glamorisation of thinness affected Alysse’s relationship with fashion, like many others. 
“When I was younger I’d buy a size too small for me, and be like ‘why don’t they fit me?’ I think I was like a size 14 by the time I was 20, but all my other friends were like a size 8, so if they asked what size are you? I’d be like ‘I’m a size 12’ I wasn’t but I’d lie because I was really uncomfortable with myself.”

A study published in 2002 in the British Journal of Psychiatry, explored how much of an impact the media and Western televsion had on young people. In 1995 they showed adolescent Fijian girls Western TV, who had previously had no exposure to this. Virtually none of them previously reported signs of dieting as it is discouraged in their culture, as well as no signs of self inflicted vomiting. Shockingly, after 3 years of watching Western television, 74% of the girls felt they were ‘too big’/’fat’ at least some of the time, 69% started dieting and 11.3% started self induced vomiting to control their weight. Therefore, girls who lived with a television set were three times more likely to experience distorted eating patterns. 
This drastic change in views of diet suggests how much those who grew up with the likes of TV, magazines and the media would have been affected by diet culture. 

During the 2020 lockdown period, the Y2K movement made a huge comeback. Suddenly social media sites such as TikTok became flooded with Y2K hauls and many of the familiar designs from the early 2000s were back in full force. 

On TikTok, the hashtag ‘Y2K’ now has over 17 billion views and ‘Y2K fashion’ has over 1.6 billion. Considering TikTok has only been around since 2016, long after the early 2000s, this just shows what a huge resurgence the movement has had. 

Mel Matilde is a Y2K fashion blogger, who has gained over 3,000 followers on Instagram posting early 2000s inspired looks. 
“I use social media as a creative outlet for me to express my love for all things fashion and beauty. As I started to experiment with my style, I started to look for inspiration from the 2000’s. I really loved the chunky jewellery, bedazzled ed hardy tees, juicy couture and low-rise jeans.”  

(Image via @mxmth0t on Instagram)

Despite her love for this era of fashion, she does believe that it has had its negative effects for diet culture.  
“I think the fashion industry has never been inclusive and still promotes toxic diet cultures. The 2000s were definitely an era of low-rise jeans and had different body standards at the time.” 

Being immersed in such trends has even affected her own mental health. 
“I would definitely say that the entire Y2K aesthetic has shifted my mindset on body standards. It has affected my own perspective of my body but I have always struggled with body dysmorphia.” 

The resurgence of the Y2K trends are not affecting the younger generation, but can be triggering for the generations which grew up during the toxicity of the 2000s era.

Gaby Rose grew up with an eating disorder during the early 2000s, and despite the diet culture not being the sole reason of this, she said it was a “contributing factor.”

(Image via Gaby rose)

She recalls when she was first made aware of diet culture when she was just 4 years old. 
“I think diet culture has always been around, but I remember when I was about four, I was looking through a magazine and there was super super skinny models on there. I was born premature and was put on a lot of steroids growing up, so I was a chubbier child, so from there on out I was like ‘well I need to diet’ so that I did."

She also felt that she as she didn’t meet the ideal body standards, she didn’t feel comfortable with wearing what was trendy during that time. 

“To be able to wear that you felt like you had to be super skinny and have a flat tummy, so I was uncomfortable with it as I wasn’t the mould for that kind of outfit.” 

For many, reminiscing over the trends of the early 2000s can be a real bitter-sweet. They can hold an element of nostalgia over us, as we look back at the glitz and the glamour and the some of the more outrageous outfits which were normalised in the era.

 But at the same time, for many, it can't help but be a reminder of the unrealistic standards we were quite literally expected to 'fit' into.