I can’t wait to be thin

teleological appearances + the need to opine

super mild spoilers for The Last Showgirl

What it is to have and be a body fascinates me. I love to talk and learn and write about it. The novel I’m furtively working on centres around this- what does it mean to be in our body, and out of it. What does it mean for your body to be seen as something other than a body; instead, a tool, a paintbrush, a pen. If you think my writing shows me to be obsessed with our appearance fixation, know that you haven’t even seen the drafts. Much like the pursuit of beauty, understanding how I feel about it seems like a lifelong quest.

Since I was a young teenager on Tumblr learning feminism 101 (that now, a decade later, seems to be somewhat forgotten in some circles), I’ve been trying to figure out what I actually think about cosmetic procedures. I’ve decided, in my own life, to focus more on how I feel, and respond to that. How I feel about aesthetic alterations isn’t really relevant to this essay, instead I’m taking the time to assess why how I feel about how I feel is so important. Why it’s taking up so much of my brain space.

There’s freedom in not requiring a concrete analysis. Nuance has become a buzzword, used to mean ‘I had more than one thought on this topic and therefore am intelligent’ rather than ‘this topic is fluid and we are not, or at least I am not, equipped to come up with a definitive answer, but I’m considering it carefully nonetheless’. In many ways we’ve replaced our obsession over beauty with an obsession over that obsession- or grown the second obsession on the side, like an abscess or a fungus. So, I want to give myself a resolution of sorts, and break out of the hamster wheel of trying to deduce the socially, morally, and philosophically correct way to describe my thoughts about lip filler. There’s more to life.

Dissonantly enough, Bella Hadid was the key to this. In 2022 she told Vogue that she, ‘scientifically perfect’ model of the year, found it hard to look in the mirror, and wished she “had kept the nose of my ancestors” instead of getting a nose job at 14. This was enough for me to experience some kind of matrix-level realisation that it’s all a scam. It wasn’t a new concept, and it doesn’t always ease difficult feelings, but it broke through. How you look and how you feel about how you look aren’t really related at all. So why focus on either?

top 5 most iconic crying photos

Partly because it’s one of the main fuels and outputs of social media- in many ways, the main purpose it serves for a lot of us. I know we’re indoctrinated, but surely we’re not foolish enough to believe when they say their ‘what I eat in a day’ content is just for viewers’ entertainment, rather than being a suggestion. We can’t deny any longer that obsessive consumption of this kind of content is, in itself, an symptom. The concept of a WIEIAD is inherently insidious, and if it isn’t intended to give people ideas or fill them with guilt (which it inevitably will), then the only assessment that remains is that it’s pointless and superficial. Do content creators genuinely think we’d care what snacks they brought to the airport, or what they ate to ‘detox’ after a big weekend, if it didn’t feed the constantly buzzing background radiation of self-scourging? I mean this genuinely, and without malice: should we be concerned about people who think their choice of breakfast, or what they consume as a model living in New York, would be of any interest to us if we didn’t have a deep-rooted obsession with food and bodies?

Trying to dissect why this is different to ‘come get baby Botox with me’ or ‘morning shed’ videos is tricky to do. The main scale that appears to change, in this aspect, is the medicalisation of the body. It all depends on your personal level of acceptance. From time to time, I still visit Tumblr, where only cult-followed NYC models and people who enjoy contextless poetry snippets find themselves. A while ago I saw one of the models in question answer an anonymous question about her labioplasty, a procedure that’s grown immensely in popularity over the past decade. She assured the anon that she’d had the procedure just for herself. I closed not only the tab, but also my laptop, and took a walk.

You have the first five seconds of encountering the heads of the snakes to cut them off, otherwise you might be convinced enough to let them sink their teeth in. Never mind that two more will grow back in their place. You have to be strong enough to know that each new lifestyle micro-trend is venomous, and act swiftly.

Many influencers ask to be judged by their intentions, but gain their notability from the outcome. Their intentions are always some variation on spreading positivity, sharing their most authentic selves, creating a space for like-minded people to meet each other. The outcome being a steady stream of social media destinations where 90% of people look like 1% of people you’d encounter in real life. This could inevitably harm even the most rational viewer, because we’re sunk waist-deep in it like quicksand. That viewers flock to content because we so deeply crave the mere sight of thinness is essential to our understanding of all media, of fashion, of art. We need a vessel to make ourselves feel bad, and we’re attuned to seek out the beauty ideal like magpies.

cropped because I’m not trying to put anyone in the stocks, but picture red light masks, mouth tape, under eye patches, etc

There’s a sociological definition of addiction as a gradual shrinking of the things that can bring you satisfaction, dopamine, or attention. In this sense, we’re addicted to looking at thin bodies, whether it’s with their thinness as the focus, or as a bonus.

The common discussion of feminism in relation to weight loss, cosmetic surgery, makeup and the like, is of individual vs system. Whether the act is one of oppression of others, or a symptom of being oppressed. Or neither. Of course, the reality is far more complex. Assuming a conclusion based on what we know of ourselves as individuals and on the surface isn’t useful, but nor is assuming that people don’t know their own minds. We are all simultaneously actors and reactors within this system, some more than others, based upon the differing levels of social power they have (race, class, etc). We’re all what Foucault would refer to as ‘docile bodies’: our appearances could, at any time, be captured or observed- and, most importantly, assessed. Criticised. Much like a panopticon, even if it’s not you whose received the judgment in the past, it could be, any minute now, even without your knowledge. So we behave accordingly.

When you operate within the rules of a system, you gain power, and strengthen the system. The system will not work in your favour, and the rules will change. But you will have had power, however temporary, and that can award safety, physical or mental.

Even when people do engage in aesthetic processes ‘for themselves’, it’s often for a hypothetical, dissociated version of themselves- their future self, ‘that girl’, to be someone your younger self would look up to. We’re alienated from each individual part of our body, and each version of the self. Perhaps you’re doing it for the version of you that lives within, desperate to be seen in the light- the version of you that can reach her full potential. Your life is a path with a telos, an end point, an outcome: to be thin, to be beautiful. You’re a block of marble waiting to be chipped away to a statue. People gravitate towards content of thin, beautiful women online because their drive to emulate that is constant, active or not. It’s assumed that everything in between is throwaway until we wake up looking like them.

We idolise thinness in the same way that we idolise billionaires: with unnecessary respect, in the hope that one day it will be our turn.

In her memoir Hunger, Roxanne Gay explores this concept, through an analysis of Oprah’s 2015 Weightwatchers ads.

“In yet another commercial, Oprah somberly says, “Inside every overweight woman is a woman she knows she can be.” This is a popular notion, the idea that the fat among us are carrying a thin woman inside. Each time I see this particular commercial, I think, I ate that thin woman and she was delicious but unsatisfying. And then I think about how fucked up it is to promote this idea that our truest selves are thin women hiding in our fat bodies like imposters, usurpers, illegitimates.”

― Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

This concept can be somewhat expanded. Aesthetic procedures are painted as bringing out something you already possess. If you time your Botox and retinol correctly you can preserve the youthful skin you were born with. You have a right to that skin, it’s the only thing you’ll ever truly own. If you shave off that part of your nose to reveal the shape it holds inside you can reach your true potential. Ozempic and other GLP-1s rid you of ‘food noise’. Of course, this ‘food noise’ isn’t you. They’re pollutants. The self, or what’s left of it, is aligned with what we see as inspirational, and the everything else is an unfortunate, likely temporary, challenge.

This idea is explored in Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl (2025), the story of a 57-year-old Las Vegas showgirl whose show is about to close. The thing about beauty, or beauty designed to fit a predetermined shape, is that it cannot last. And if all you’ve ever learned is how to hold onto it, what are you left with then? I doubt any woman could watch the film and not feel empathy for Shelley, for whom the only thing that can overpower how hard she loves, is her need to be beautiful.

During the climax of the film, Shelley screeches at a man who’s rejected her from an audition that she is attractive, regardless of what he might think. She has her own monologue about the tightrope women face, how you can’t win no matter what you do. It’s a little like if Barbie (2023) hadn’t held your hand so tightly. Pamela Anderson, who has historically allowed various talk show hosts make fun of her sexuality and trauma so she could platform causes like animal rights, was possibly the only woman who could have carried this role so gracefully and powerfully. A woman whose career was launched off of her beauty, partly launched by her cosmetic surgery, but who, at 57 herself, shows up to red carpets barefaced and stunningly beautiful.

The Last Showgirl (2025, dir. Gia Coppola)

Sanchez Taylor (2012) described how, for some white working class women, breast implants were a way of having power they couldn’t otherwise access; a form of ‘woman’s work’. Within Judith Butler’s concept of performativity, aesthetic processes are a way of ‘doing gender’. This allows understanding for those who engage, whilst also refocusing on a standard of societal intention.

Equally, through aesthetic processes, the gendered endpoint is reached. The telos. One can achieve gender, not through the end result, but in the very act of engaging with reconstructive or modification activities. Never has this been more true than over the past couple of years, during which the defining as girlhood has centred around skincare regimes, outfit changes, putting makeup on. Each instance being, once again, positive in intention. Harmless in a vacuum. Unfortunately, the internet, in all of its saturation and depth and reach, is the polar opposite of a vacuum.

One of the binaries of aesthetic endeavours (and though eating disorders are much more complex than just being a matter of appearances, I’m including them in this) is effort (or consideration) and time. This seems to be where the flavour of judgment is formed. You can decide to get filler or botox and have it within an hour- low effort, low time. You could get some kind of invasive procedure- high effort, low time. You can add something to your exercise regime- low effort, high time. You could try to work on the way you see and think about yourself- high effort, high time.

Something that’s worth paying attention to is the skin-tingling, chest-tightening urge to look different. I know you know what I mean. That you have to do something, that you have to look different now. Some cut or dye their hair, get tattoos, piercings. But you can’t do three months worth of dieting and exercise in an evening. You can’t use retinol for one night and see the impact. In this way, the processes operate differently. At times, this is viewed as meaning something so more worthwhile. That you’ve worked or suffered for the effect. Equally, if you overdo the effort, it’s obsessive, trying too hard. Loses its chicness. I don’t think this is a misguided assessment. If something takes so much time or so much effort, though it’s likely not to make a huge difference to your life, maybe your priorities have been skewed.

There would be a lot of use to seeing beauty processes and procedures, dieting (or even eating disorders, on the more extreme end of the spectrum- or maybe rational, if you look at the world they’re formed in response to), as coping mechanisms. Urge-satiating, panic-quelling, however long they take. A form of self-soothing. It’s up to you how worth it that is, and whether you have anything else to hand. That decision can’t possibly be based on people you’ve seen on the internet, because whatever you see of them simply isn’t accurate. But it’s as though analysing the opinions of others- did she get a rhinoplasty, is she coke-skinny or heroin-skinny- is in itself a form of soothing that buzz. Numbing or satisfying. Scratches an itch. A way of reaching your hand into the fire without getting burnt. That doesn’t make it bad or good. Depends on how you feel about dependence, or what you’re happy to depend on.

everyone say than you Pam

I think the first step is to no longer dissect beauty procedures solely by whether they’re feminist or not. Is that a one-dimensional continuum along which everything has to sit? If a process is not feminist, or anti-feminist, that affects us all differently. Patriarchy’s effects are not ubiquitous. Painting them as such is bound to mean that while we might save a bit of pain for some rich, white, cis, able-bodied women, we risk worsening the situation for pretty much every other woman along existing lines of marginalisation. Plus, it’s often women with privilege who are benefiting from and perpetuating the issues in the first place. The ones who can afford procedures that won’t kill them, or support to deal with the side effects. Meanwhile others are dying from cheap BBLs and unsupervised GLP-1 use.

There isn’t an end point for the debate. This has always felt, to me, like a personal failing. In fact, it’s freeing. It removes some of the shame and the judgment, which means that there’s less cognitive dissonance. In turn, this means that I’m not tempted to brush off my own place in the system, to write off any issues entirely, in order to justify any way I’ve participated. I try to engage with things out of genuine enjoyment, because even if I’ve been sold that feeling of enjoyment, at least that’s better than trying to outrun panic. Anything that comes from a feeling of desperation, I attribute to that urge, that feeling of needing immediate gratification, and I do anything else to feel calm and even joyful until that passes. Except the times where I channel that jitteriness into trimming my fringe, which might not always yield the best results, but works without causing too much damage.

What I’m trying to say is that feeling the need to come to a conclusion about your opinions on aesthetic obsession, or judge others for their choices, is much like the thing itself: a symptom. It’s a rare time where we’d all benefit from being a little more self-centred in some ways- what genuinely feels right for me?- and a little more considerate in others- what’s the impact on the causes and systems I care about if I engage with this? Just because a few thousand people in a snark thread feel justified in making comments about someone’s choice to modify their appearance, doesn’t mean it aligns with me. Just because someone online explained that using Ozempic is truly healing for them, doesn’t mean a lot of people aren’t being harmed by our culture of thinness. The en masse behaviour of others isn’t a loophole out of your own values: they’ll come back to haunt you regardless, in one way or another.

There isn’t an end point. Your appearance will never stabilise, nor will the rules around what you should look like- nor will the discourse around what’s right and wrong within that. But, if we’re ever going to be free of those pressures, you have to make a certain amount of peace with each of those aspects. Chasing an answer is like chasing the beauty standard, is like chasing the culture, as the images of those in the public eye change. It’s futile, and it will rob you of your best days. Unless you don’t let it.