The Aftershocks of Y2K: Victoria’s Secret, Thinness, and the Body Image Crisis
The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show and the enduring pressure on women to chase the unattainable.
As a teenager, nothing was more powerful than the feeling of a Victoria’s Secret bag swinging from my fingertips. No journey to the mall was complete without a trip inside the sleek, glimmering world of the ten-foot-tall Angels that lined its billboards, making promises my fourteen-year-old self couldn’t keep, let alone begin to understand.
You might hit up American Eagle for some low-rise jeans, or treat yourself to an Auntie Anne’s pretzel while simultaneously body shaming yourself. You might even pop into Bath and Body Works for a vanilla-scented something that you were sure would catch your crush’s attention (it wouldn’t). But nothing felt more exhilarating than that bag. It said you were wanted. Desired. It didn’t matter that you were just a kid and no one was seeing that lacy push-up bra or appreciating the Cheeky little number you just bought. That was part of the fun. It was for you to know and them to (maybe) find out, and just having it on felt like power. It felt like being in the know.
Recently, I was swept off my feet by Pandora’s article chronicling the history of Victoria’s Secret and its troubled past. It mirrored, albeit in a much more cohesive and chronicled way, the thoughts echoed in my recent post: I only feel pretty after I work out. And so, I leaned into that familiar tug of nostalgia that I’m prone to revisiting, even, and especially for the most painful parts of my youth. In doing so, I found myself compelled to revisit those years. The Y2K years as they’re (not so) fondly remembered. If your memory needs jogging, let me remind you:
I was born In the summer of ‘88, which made me the peak impressionable age for the Y2k era. Limited Too tees gave way to American Eagle low-rise jeans—the only ones that would properly fit my ever-smaller-growing waist against my stubbornly large hips as I aged from pre-teen to full-blown teenager and had an identity crisis in my body daily.
I remember so vividly the struggle of low-rise jeans (how does one sit in low-rise jeans?) and the way I’d pull my thong out just so, peaking out like the girls on TV, lending itself to promises that I, a fourteen-year-old girl, neither understood nor was prepared to carry through. I remember how I felt desperate for men to gawk at me, how cat-calling felt exciting instead of dangerous, how this was the easiest way I found to get attention. Remember the movie Thirteen?
Mostly, I remember how all of this—Victoria’s Secret, crop tops, hip bones, inappropriate glances from too-old men— felt like one very important thing: power.
I am a product of The Simple Life era and Victoria’s Secret fashion shows and strutting in my grandmother’s living room to Red Hot Chili Peppers like I was Adriana Lima; my favorite model at the time, for her impossibly long torso and gorgeously lean abs, which she later came out as admitting she got by starving herself, cutting all solids nine days before an appearance and not drinking fluids in the days before. Dehydration leads to the popping of muscles, if you don’t know. (I did not)
I even tried out for America’s Next Top Model when I was 18, a naive hope that although I had no modeling experience, could not smize, and was not anywhere near the correct height or weight, the casting crew would see something in me and take a chance. Always this obsession with wanting someone to see something special in me. To believe in me. To be seen.
But I was never going to get on that show. At 5’7 135 pounds at the time, I was never going to make it.
But it wasn’t until someone commented on this post sharing that we were all victims of the Y2k era of thinness that it dawned on me. I’d always thought this obsession with my body was innate and in some ways, I think that’s true. I think as women, we feel a certain pressure from society, from each other, but also from ourselves as we make invisible connections and draw conclusions about what life looks like with one body or another. But it had been completely lost on me that I’d grown up in a very specific time. One where to be a woman in the world was to be bombarded with thinness and abs and angles and such impossible goals.
So where do we go from here? I honestly don’t know. While many brands have made strides in being more inclusive, I’m not sure I’ll ever shake the trauma of Adriana Lima starving herself to strut down the runway or knowing that I’ll never be a size 2. Or worse, of wanting it.
I doubt I’ll ever look in the mirror and be happy with myself. Even now, at arguably my most in shape, I still look at my body in the mirror and think, “we can do better, yes?” I still feel bad when I miss a day of exercise due to illness or I have an extra cookie. I still chastise myself for having no willpower, even when there is so much evidence to the contrary. And I know it will only get worse. That I’ll look at photos in twenty years and wish I had the body I do now, just like I look at photos of when I was twenty-five and think the same.
I don’t know if it ever stops or if my generation just learns to live with it. I hope we can do better for the next one. That we can sell power as something to be earned through respect and not the size of our waist or how much we’re willing to hurt ourselves for it. That there’s a world in which I won’t hit submit on this post and go eat my tiny overnight oats for breakfast and my pre-made 250 calorie lunch to save room for tomorrow’s 1,000 calorie dinner binge before skipping breakfast on Saturday to make up for it.
The damage is done; I’m not sure I can ever unwrite these guidelines that were set for me as a teen. And this is what’s so precarious about it all. Even when they’re fixed, they’re not really. Because there’s an entire generation living with the trauma and unintentionally passing it down. It’s dangerous because it doesn’t just go away; it lives on in our behaviors, our beliefs, our fears and reactions. It becomes a part of us. But I hope that one day, for all of us, eating will just feel like fuel, and treats won’t be guilty, and girls can just be.
I feel this to my bones. I'm a summer '87 baby. Even though I started writing with no idea of what I wanted to talk about, I find myself constantly coming back to body image... and no surprise, following that trail leads back to Y2K media. I hate the way I find myself talking about my body around younger women. The least I can do is set a better example, yet it's so intuitive to respond to compliments by pointing out my perceived flaws or immediately dismissing my ability to wear trendy items because "they won't look right on me." We're in this one together!
Thank you for sharing such a thought-provoking and vulnerable post. As somebody who grew up in this era and had a similar body type to these models, it’s been something I’ve had a hard time talking to people about when I struggle with my own body image because so many people desperately wanted my physique.
But the amount of illness that I dealt with and stress that created for me is not something I’d wish on others nor recommend. And it’s insane to me how society tells you to be one way and when you finally achieve that it comes back at you with such backlash for doing the wrong thing. I’ve had strangers come up to me and comment on my body to tell me I should go eat something or ask my weight when we’ve never said two words to each other before.
While I completely understand that “thin privilege” is a legit thing, I spent most of my adult years wishing I felt more like an adult with a “woman’s body” and not like a child since my size, height, and measurements have been basically the same since middle school, and I jokingly say my shape is “stick shape”, flat, thin and no curve to be found.
I don’t know if there will ever be a time that we don’t condemn ourselves or try to fit into someone else’s ideals, but I hope to God that we can do better for ourselves now that we are older, be kinder, and be vocal about the impact these things have had on our lives with those around us going forward so maybe they’ll have a better chance of appreciating and loving themselves in a way we never did.