In 2014, Vogue declared in an article that “the big booty has officially become ubiquitous.” With that, the cultural behemoth ushered in what they termed “the Era of the Big Booty.” (Unsurprisingly, the controversial story no longer exists on their website.) Fast forward eight years, and various publications are forecasting the re-emergence of the Y2K aesthetic. “Heroin chic” (cringe) is supposedly coming back in fashion. Some people are having revision surgery to reinstate their original pre-op features.
When it comes to the modern woman’s body, and society’s concept of the ideal version of that, over the last decade we’ve witnessed in real time the pendulum swing from a silhouette reminiscent of a sand timer to that of a waif. It may be dizzyingly relentless, but it also poses the question: What does it mean to be desirable? And who decides what’s desirable in the first place?
“Beauty has always been a synonym for goodness,” explains Xine Yao, PhD, a lecturer of American Literature at University College London. “This goes back to the ancient Greeks, who saw this association between how beautiful someone was and their moral worth. But this is something we’ve increasingly complicated since then, because it’s not a neutral good. So much is dependent on disability, race, class, and gender norms.”