Why fashion is going backwards when it comes to women’s bodies

Finally, someone has said it: thin is in again, and it’s not good. Actually, it’s very worrying, as was astutely put this week by none other then Chioma Nnadi, head of editorial content at British Vogue. Speaking on the BBC’s Today programme, the magazine editor blamed the proliferation of extreme skinniness on the runways on the rise of Ozempic. “We should be all concerned,” she said.

“I am very concerned, and I know many of my colleagues are very concerned, and I do think perhaps Ozempic has something to do with it.” Nnadi added: “We’re part of this moment where we’re seeing the pendulum swing back to skinny being in, and often these things are treated like a trend, and we don’t want them to be.”

Ozempic is a brand name for a drug called semaglutide, which is used to treat type 2 diabetes but has been prescribed off-label for weight loss. The drug works by mimicking the effects of a hormone called GLP-1 that is released after eating, subsequently making you feel full. In the UK, semaglutide is sold under the brand name Wegovy.

For a while now, rumours have percolated the internet about which celebrities are thought to have taken it to shed pounds. And as the drug has become more widely accesible to those who don’t need it (I was able to fudge my answers on an online pharmacy’s website to acquire a prescription a few months ago), it has raised all sorts of alarm bells about what this is doing to our bodies and minds.

But until now, those alarm bells have been ringing somewhat dimly in fashion circles, which is ironic considering this has been one of the primary promoters of this growing problem.

Sure, there have been murmurings, like when The New York Times’ fashion director, Vanessa Friedman, tweeted in February 2023: “Even I am distracted by the extreme skinniness of many of the models in Jason Wu’s show”. She later clarified: “I have been around a lot of eating disorders in my life, as well as lots of naturally thin people, and the difference between the two is not hard to recognise. I can tell you at least two of the models fell into this category.”

Beyond that, though, this is a problem most fashion people seem to have either long-dismissed or ignored.

I’ve been going to fashion shows for seven years and I can safely say that no amount of body positivity has changed the brazen fact that the majority of models on those catwalks are very thin. The message is, and always has been, simple: beauty is synonymous with slimness and always will be.

I’m afraid that’s still the case when some designers decide to cast one or two “plus-size” models, which only ever seems like tokenism. And while there are plenty of smaller brands casting more diverse body types in their shows – think Sinead O’Dwyer, Karoline Vitto, and Di Petsa – nothing is really going to move the needle until the major labels take action.

According to data compiled by model and body positivity campaigner Felicity Hayward, and published by Glamour, the number of plus-size models during London Fashion Week has been steadily increasing since 2022, with 80 out of 2,000 models considered curve or plus. But elsewhere, designers are lagging behind: just 14 out of 2,888 models were plus-size in Milan, and just 43 out of 4,500 for Paris.

These figures tell a dismal story, which is that fashion still has an incredibly limited view on beauty, one that is causing widespread harm to women everywhere. The thing is, even if you’re outside of the fashion world, it’s those catwalks that set the precedent for everything else, from the campaigns we see in high-street shops to the photographs we see in magazines and on social media.

It’s brilliant Nnadi has raised this issue, least of all because she’s at the helm of one of the industry’s most defining titles, and designers are likely to listen to her. But it’s going to take a lot more than one person to invoke meaningful change here. For far too long, the fashion industry has celebrated thin bodies. Now, with Ozempic, that celebration feels more dangerous than ever.

It’s particularly sad when you consider how, a few years ago, there was so much talk about body positivity, and even body neutrality. But given the current state of things, as Nnadi put it, it’s hard not to look at those shifts as trends. And what worries me most is that those trends appear to be over.