It seems many teen girls have recently become obsessed with the “thigh gap.”
If you haven’t heard of this trend, it’s exactly as it sounds. Girls are doing whatever it takes to become thin enough to have a gap between their thighs when they stand. Of course this is dangerous - very few people are able to achieve this look naturally, and so girls are going to unnatural and unhealthy lengths to get it done. Memes are cropping up all over “thinspiration” pages where girls go to strengthen their resolve toward being thin at any cost - often developing disordered eating. Parents, educators, eating disorder specialists and other adults in charge are justifiably concerned about this. People are wringing their hands about how wrong the teens are and how we’re going to have to get them to stop.
Parents are told that it’s important that their teen girls have a good body image, and that’s true. But let’s be realistic here, teen girls did not wake up one day and say, “hey, let’s make thigh gap a thing!” This started in magazines, fashion shows, movies, television, and everywhere else that girls get their ideas about beauty. The problem isn’t teen girls, the problem is the beauty ideal that they are spoon-fed from birth. It starts with onesies that say “Does this diaper make my bottom look fat,” and it just gets worse after that as magazines tell them to be an A+ fashion genius and Australia's Next Top Model tells them that you can never be too thin.
