the toxic diet culture & fatphobia of early 2000's chick flicks

It was always wild to me that they tried to call Anne Hathaway fat when to me she looked like one of the thinnest people in the movie

What’s even worse is how movies portray women with ED’s as difficult and annoying. As a sign of being vapid and superficial instead of a sickness. The male romantic lead would make a point out of wanting a ”real” girl who is not afraid of calories (still being thin of course) as it was the same as being genuine.

seeing anne hathaway's skinny arms flop around as she says she's not skinny is actually revolting. like lmfao its sooo cruel. I cant believe they had the nerve

when ur an early gen z person so u had both heroin chic & bbl bodies as beauty standards in about the span of a decade

This is why a whole bunch of millennial women had heart attacks and panic attacks when they found out low rise skinny jeans were making a comeback.

society's ability to 'fat shame' people that are actually very thin...is astounding. perfect example of the fact that the absence of fatphobia would benefit people of all sizes, but fat people are the victim of the system

A note on the Devil wears Prada, as someone who worked in a fashion environnement in the 00s, the microagression you see for Andy are very real. I was once asked if I had lost weight because I was so pretty that day, looked up weird because I ate a burger, asked if a ate a whole box of crackers per day when I had one at my day for snacks and had a friend asked if she was pregnant because she had a tummy. It could be better addressed in the movie but I think it wanted to showcase how it is hard to survive in fashion without internalizing anything negative about your body. Everyone hated it back then but no one had the strenght to answer back as theses comments often came from your supervisor. 100% toxic!

emily’s disordered eating patterns in the devil wears prada triggered me so much on first watch. it’s still one of my favorite movies, but the scenes where she talks abt her diet + anne hathaway is fat shamed always make me so uncomfortable + upset. i could never find anyone talking abt it in reviews, so i convinced myself i was being overdramatic and it’s not a big deal, but it is a big deal, and it’s gross how normal it was and kinda still is to say things like that.

with the return of y2k fashion and culture, im lowkey worried that early 2000's beauty standards are going to come back,

Interestingly enough I think the hunger games series is the only film series I watched as a tween/teen that showed food as something necessary for survival. It also showed the main characters being disgusted by the idea of expelling food just to ingest more for pleasure. It made young me realise that food isn't something to be taken lightly and not something I could ever go without. Even when I was 14 and crying on the school's bathroom floor over my weight I still sat down and ate lunch that day. I think more films and shows need to portray food in the same light as the hunger games did.

I also would like to address the way in other teen movies like "Mean Girls" dethroning the queen bee is taking her "hotness" aware by making her look "fat" bc that's less desirable somehow? When Regina's doesn't get fat but wears more baggy clothes and then she's bullied bc of her weight gain, or the scene when she's trying the prom dress on and the worker says they don't sell other sizes... (Sorry if I misspelled something, English ain't my first language <3)

It always blew my mind how women have identified as their size. “I’m a 6.” How can you tell?! There’s never been a single time in fashion that womens sizes have been consistent!

I feel like we need to acknowledge how this diet culture is still JUST as toxic as it was back then. It's just evolved to be more subtle and less shocking in some instances, the cycle will repeat and we'll look back horrified thinking we're "better" now :(

it's honestly so messed up. I still have to actively remind myself that going to bed hungry isn't something I should be proud of

Oh god. The 2010s thighgap obsession was one of the things that made me develop anorexia nervosa at 11. I remember looking up "thigh gap workouts" and desperately hoping my thighs wouldn't touch someday. I looked for diets and envied the girls in my class who had "the thigh gap." Hardly anyone else knew what it even was. My puberty just stopped for a few years because of my ED and now I'm short because of it 🥲 now at 18 i still suffer from body dysmorphia and other unrelated mental illnesses but I survived my ED. Sadly the way that I started viewing my thighs back then has imprinted the importance of having thighs that don't touch in my head and I still check my thighs every time I look in the mirror.

Even in the 70s, I remember watching Grease, confused that everyone said Jan was fat and she wasn’t!

It still blows my mind that this was so normalised.

I think one of the reality check moments in Bridget Jones’ Diary (the book) is the part where she hits her “ideal weight” and everyone asks her if she’s feeling okay, saying she looks tired and etc. For me it really confirmed that the rest of the focus on weight is meant to be unrealistic and unhealthy and it definitely changed how I viewed that aspect of the book (which I still find a little triggering tbh)

I remember watching devil wears Prada with my parents and I commented that a cube of cheese didn’t seem like enough food. My mom whipped her head at me and snapped “yes it is!” It’s a core childhood memory. Battling a 16-year eating disorder lmao

Thanks so much for addressing "Love Actually"'s problematic fat phobia. Even as a preteen, I was always uncomfortable by the fat jokes at Natalie's expense, when she's a perfectly healthy size. I realize that it was a jab at how the media viewed Martine McCutcheon's weight at the time, but it's no less cringy and mean-spirited.