The Y2K aesthetic: Gen Z is reviving the thin obsession of the 2000s

Toxic expectations for subtlety plagued the early 2000s. So why, given that Gen Z champions inclusiveness, is the Y2K aesthetic trend?

In the early 2000s, I dreamed of being skinny. I browsed the issues of CosmoGirl AND J-14, longing for a flat stomach like the pop stars they so often displayed. I didn’t look like them; in fact, I was never going to look like them: I was a fat, bullied kid who wore football shorts and Gap hoodies to school while popular girls rocked platform dresses and bejeweled blouses. But it was more than just closet envy. I studied LiveJournal blogs that taught girls like me how to be skinny. I was on a diet. I hid my body and blamed it for keeping me from the life I wanted. I thought vulnerability was my ticket to being liked, accepted and desired by the world around me.

Since then, I’ve learned to appreciate and even love my body the way it is, thanks to body-positive influencers, healthy relationships, and lots of therapy. So when I saw miniskirts, low-cut jeans, and tank tops flying down the Fall 2022 runways at Miu Miu, Versace, and Diesel, my brain raced. Desperate to pretend this was a bad dream, I took to social media to do some stylish digging. A quick search of “Y2K” on TikTok produced videos — mostly featuring ultra-thin white female presenters — with more than seven billion views. It was all over Pinterest, too: Canadian searches for “Y2K-inspired clothing” and “early 2000s style” were up 20 and 23 times the amount from last year, respectively. I thought back to that teenage girl who hated herself and wondered, “Didn’t we learn our whole lesson the first time?”

“Nothing tastes as good as feeling weak”

The Y2K aesthetic of the 2000s was one of complete abandon – an embrace of the future with a retro past. Suggestive Juicy Couture sweatshirts, extreme low-rise denim, and bandana tops were barely scattered across every issue of Vogue. Just look at the red carpet queens of the 2002 MTV VMAs to get the picture: Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.

At the time, these trends were a colourful, fun and daring response to the more conservative style of the previous millennium and took off in the heroine-style coats of the 90s, an aesthetic that introduced us to Kate Moss and the “waif” body type “. And while that decade at least favored wider designs, in the 2000s, the silhouette became noticeably slimmer. It was less about fashion and more about celebrating skinny bodies. Actually, the body it was fashion.

“Y2K style is mostly about detail,” says Gianluca Russo, columnist and author of The Power of Plus: Inside Fashion’s Size Inclusion Revolution. “But it went beyond clothing. Model bodies inevitably became a Y2K style asset. The message was clear: this is not for plus-size bodies.” In a 2009 interview about her role in the fashion world, Moss acknowledged her dedication to the look with the statement, “Nothing tastes as good as feeling skinny.” .

And apparently many agreed with him. Hospitalizations for eating disorders among women of all ages increased by 21 percent from 1999 to 2009 in the United States alone. And many of these people are still suffering now, as editor Lucy Huber pointed out in a tweet last year: “If any Gen Z is wondering why every millennial woman has an eating disorder, it’s because in the 2000s a thing a normal thing to say to a teenage girl was “When you think you’re hungry, you’re actually thirsty so just drink water and you’ll be fine”.

But after a toxic 10-year period, when women like me were taught that our self-worth depends on the size of our clothes, the tide slowly began to turn.

Is Gen Z to blame?

The body positivity movement, born out of the Fat Rights Movement in the late 1960s, entered small pockets of the Internet in the early 2000s, but became mainstream with the arrival of Instagram in 2010. Fat People started leaning towards visibility using hashtags like #OOTD (outfit of the day), #effyourbeautystandards and #honoryourves. And then Sonya Renee Taylor’s highly hyphenated spoken word video of her poem “The Body Is No Excuse” went viral, leading to an international movement and a groundbreaking book, both of the same name.

The movement also made its way onto TikTok, with the hashtag #bodypositive garnering 6.1 billion views and others like #plussizefashion full of curvy people trying on clothes. When I log into the platform, my algorithm feeds me all these videos. But mostly I see only millennials creating this content, while Gen Z—the generation known for fighting for diversity, LGBTQIA2S+ rights, and ethical consumerism—plays with the Y2K aesthetic. Is body positivity somehow crossing a generation? And if so, why?

Well, according to Russo, there are a number of things to consider, including the fashion cycle: We’ve naturally arrived in the 2000s because it’s the decade that follows the ’80s and ’90s, which were trending for the pair of passed. of years. We should also keep in mind that low-rise jeans are new to Gen-Zers; they are either not yet born or too young to enjoy the trend the first time.

And for many, Russo adds, it’s about nostalgia—which was especially prevalent during the pandemic, a dark and heavy time that made the boldness and brilliance of the Y2K aesthetic appealing. At the same dark time, many of us were dealing with weight gain, something that is completely normal, but has nevertheless affected our ability to access mainstream fashion.

It’s not necessarily that Gen Z doesn’t care about size inclusion. After all, the plus size movement — which promotes representation for people who wear sizes 10 to 16 — was born on TikTok. Simply put, other factors simply take precedence, and that’s a problem.

Self-esteem in a digital age

“If you’re not seeing people who look like you wearing those patterns, then there seems to be an implicit message that maybe you shouldn’t be wearing them,” says registered psychologist Kristin M. von Ranson. “It’s hard for young people to learn to look at things with a critical eye when diet culture and the thin ideal permeate everything.” Von Ranson has helped shed light on the struggles Gen-Zers face when it comes to body image and social media with the Dove Self-Esteem Project. His latest study found that more than half of girls surveyed say idealized beauty content on social media makes them feel worse about themselves. Eating disorders are also on the rise again, with the number of anorexia diagnoses in Canadian patients aged nine to 18 rising 60 per cent from pre-pandemic numbers. Similar figures were seen in the United States.

Big brands aren’t helping either, with many partaking in curve-washing – a marketing tactic that uses different sized bodies to sell products on social media without actually offering adequate size options to their consumers, making it seems as if the inclusion of size has come further than it actually has.

Where do we go from here?

Gen-Zers are new to the size inclusion conversation and in the early stages of developing their body image. “They’re still young and teenagers who are navigating different harmful messages about body image,” says Russo. “We can’t expect them to fight before they really understand what fighting is all about.” That may be true, but Gen-Zers have the upper hand when it comes to getting the message across. They dictate what goes viral, and that’s the tool that will do the most work.

However, the vibe is changing, and Gen-Zers (with the help of their millennial elders) are proving that it’s possible to take the fun parts of the Y2K aesthetic and leave the bad ones behind. Plus-size fashion influencers like Tiaynna McClyde, Jessica Torres, Karina Gomez, and Jessica Blair are reclaiming and bringing a new and inclusive take on the 2000s aesthetic.

It’s still hard for me to fathom this updated version of a time that was so filled with an obsession with being thin and when wanted, cute and decent meant building a case against the body I was given – especially when the standards of the body have not changed much, except for the speed at which they move. But perhaps this trend, reemerging in a time of greater body size acceptance, is offering people like me the chance to reimagine it. I won’t be buying Miu Miu micro-minis anytime soon, but low-rise baggy jeans? I can stand behind them, if only to let the younger version of myself feel seen.

This article first appeared on OF FASHION October issue. Find out more here.