CHAPTERS on Are millenials really over the desire to be thin?

How can a generation shaped by diet culture and judgmental beauty standards embrace true self-acceptance... here's my small suggestion

There are two types of women in this world. Those who stride confidently around gym changing rooms, fully naked, and those who huddle under towels, wobbling on one foot to shimmy into their pants without anyone seeing their bits. I know it’s extremely un-British of me, but I used to be the former, until one of the most mortifying days of my life.

As millenials, we grew up in a world where magazines flaunted celebrities’ weights, Little Britain’s “Fat Fighters” skit was broadcast for laughs, and “heroin chic” was the aspirational term used to describe a gaunt, skeletal Kate Moss. The 2000s culture was obsessed with being as thin as possible. I know I’m not the only millennial woman who privately obsessed over her weight, secretly starved before a big event, or dieted into a smaller dress size. Honestly, I wanted to be thin far more than I wanted to be clever or successful. I worked hard to be skinny enough to feel confident getting naked in changing rooms, without crossing into extreme, unhealthy territory.

It happened in Sweden, a country renowned for its saunas. I decided to go for a spa and bought a bikini in a random shop. I popped it on in the changing room and followed the signs for sauna. When I got to a door with a notice on it which read, ‘no clothes beyond this point,’ I assumed it meant that the Swedish tradition was naked sauna. So, I trotted back into the changing room and whipped off my brand new bikini. ‘If I’d have known, I wouldn’t have bothered buying it.’ I thought. Now sans clothes I made my way down a short corridor to the glass sauna door. But as I reached for the block handle and glanced into the room of pine slatted seating, I was met with wide-eyed stares.

No one was naked. Nope. Just me. This was very much not a naked sauna, nor was such a tradition actually a Swedish thing. I don’t know where I got that from. The sign had meant no clothes, like t-shirts and jeans, not swimwear. I ran back to the changing room and left my nudey confidence behind in the heat.

Since then I have incresingly become the hide-under-towels gal. I paste clothes onto my damp limbs as quickly as possible and breathe a sigh of relief when the ordeal is over. I can only assume that the women breezing around in their birthday suits have never experienced a similar faux-pas. But what about the others, like me, who perform a changing routine resembling a circus act trying to escape a straightjacket. Surely they can’t all have been scarred by Swedish spa-goers in swimming attire too?

At a colleague’s birthday dinner recently, the topic of plastic surgery came up. ‘Would you ever get work done?’ Someone asked the group. A few admitted to a bit of botox or filler. The guy sat opposite me revealed that he’d just had a hair transplant, which explained why he was never without a cap. The conversation snowballed, ‘oh I’d like facial threads for a tighter jawline, lipo, a brazilian butt lift, someone please take the fat from my stomach and pump it into my bum cheeks!’ It was a bit of fun, but between laughing and joking, every one of us admitted to wanting to change something.

At some point, later in the 2000s, the cultutal tide started to shift. Big became beautiful, dieting turned into a nasty word and Trinny and Suzannah’s What Not To Wear had not aged well. The body positive movement swept in with social media, and with it came a refreshing acceptance of all sizes, shapes, skin tone and physical abilites.

Yet, if we’ve truly embraced this change, why are so many of us still clutching our towels like shields and reeling off lists of all the things we’d do under the knife? Why do I still catch a glimpse of my pale skin in the mirror and berate myself for not finding time to fake-tan. Okay, I no longer count calories but that teen millenial voice of judgment still pops into my thoughts.

As the Ozempic trend sweeps the US, where 20 million users were recorded last year, inevitably it has made its way over here too. The use of the drug solely for weight loss is reportedly higher for young adults. You only have to take a stroll around Sloane Square to see its prevalence. I know several fellow Millenials who are trying it out. One of whom I didn’t even recognise afterwards. If you look to the fashion world, the 90s are back with skinny jeans promoting a thinner silhoutte for women once again. Not a bandwagon I’ll be jumping back on just yet. And when it comes to plastic surgery, the removal of the buccal fat-pad tissue on the face is becoming a more common procedure, reducing the natural roundness of the face to create a sharper appearance.

It is a relief that we no longer live in a world where shows like 10 Years Younger shame women for their wrinkles and rolls. But has anything really changed? Or have we just dressed up the same insecurities in more socially acceptable language? Now we call it “self-care” instead of vanity, we frame weight-loss before an event as an act of “self-love” and we’ve learned to keep our thoughts hidden away. But they haven’t disappeared.

As the world around us evolves, we’re still figuring out how to make peace with the parts of ourselves we’ve been taught to scrutinise. The voice inside our head quietly whispering that we’re still not enough. It lingers in the hesitation before posting an unfiltered photo, the products that fill our bathroom cabinets, promising to smooth and sculpt. The way we glance at ourselves in mirrors or envy other women’s figures.

While we have got much better at recognising these struggles as unhealthy ones and have coined kinder terms to use, we’re still learning how to live comfortably in our own bodies. Progress isn’t in a straight line after all. When I see fabulous ‘Granfluencers’ on my socials I’m reminded that age is just a number, as are the kilograms on a set of scales. Perhaps true acceptance takes a lifetime to master. In the meantime, maybe we should let go of our towels a little—not just the ones in the changing room, but those in our minds too.