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    Did a little digging on how awful Pop Culture was towards beauty standards, specifically for women during the early millennium... are the tabloids still like this though?
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    Did a little digging on how awful Pop Culture was towards beauty standards, specifically for women during the early millennium… are the tabloids still like this though?

    I'm sure millennials had it rough.

    I remember trying some of these diets and failing lmao

    Posted by Twunkorama

    View 44 Comments

    44 Comments

    1. Motamommy on

      I grew up with this and it impacted me so deeply. I was on weight watchers before I was 10.

    2. Steelsity214 on

      Tabloids are not like this anymore. Growing up with this shit, it was way, way worse than it is now.

    3. UnDedo on

      This scarred too many young girls. Remember, in this era, the whole world was incredibly hostile towards young women and their bodies. the CEO of Victoria’s Secret (Epsteins friend) was selling us all the idea that we had to be stick thin and oozing sex all the time. I had an eating disorder by age 12, and this was NOT unusual.

    4. Twisties on

      I was reading these from the ages of 7-14. It did not have a good effect on me…….

    5. thelun3lag00n on

      technically she ate within her range? thats about 2200 calories and she was actively performing. anything less and she wouldn’t have the stamina to perform the way she did considering most of her gig is dancing.

      guess its chicken and rice for us all.

    6. CECINS on

      The tabloids were so much worse than that seems at face value. And it was pervasive. You heard it on tv, magazines, tabloids… and your mom was on the cabbage soup diet and calling you fat when you’re 8 and normal sized.

      I’m literally a size 6 now and still think I’m fat every time I look in the mirror. It gets so deep into your psyche.

    8. heartshapedhoops on

      back then it was just the tabloids talking about celebrities, and you could try your best to ignore them since they were just printed publications. now it’s all over celebrities’ social media and your social media, and celebrity news also bleeds into political news. i think it can’t be defined as “worse” or “better” now but rather as an evolution of what it was

    9. Funny-Negotiation-10 on

      Ugh i had come to believe subconsciously that I must only buy clothes that will hide my fat. Everything else is evil.

      No wonder I always shrank away.

    11. Sufficient_Ask5717 on

      there’s a reason the pendulum swung so hard the other way in the 2010s with the body positivity movement.

    12. letmeberillyclear on

      I’m embarrassed I distinctly remember this article. Maybe Us Weekly or something like that.

    13. BookishHobbit on

      I fear we’re going to go back to this thanks to celebs who don’t need weight loss jabs using weight loss jabs.

      I still struggle with the body dysmorphia I developed because of this kind of shit, but at least you could look away from magazines. Social media for teens is everywhere.

    14. scullywugz on

      I watched the George Clooney Batman movie with my husband this week and when it ended he shared with me that the movie was plagued with the press saying Alicia Silverstone was fat and called her Fatgirl. And tbh we’re back at that

    15. cheyenne987 on

      God I remember reading these as a kid in 2007 in the grocery line. This was awful

    17. No_Yard5926 on

      Damn these tabloids are disgusting, I feel for the people who grew up with this.

    18. joodee3 on

      This had a horrible impact on my self-esteem when I was young. I was legitimately slim and felt fat all through my teens and twenties. Looking at this picture of Britney now, she looks perfectly slim and shapely. That’s not a body wrecked by junk food, that’s like a nice normal healthy body. But I know back then I used to think that was fat because her stomach wasn’t concave. We were all messed up back then!

    19. adultdolllover on

      Social media replaced tabloids. Now instead of being dealt physic damage by reading shit like this, you get it by influencers shaming their followers for eating regular meals and comments calling strangers a whale because they’re not a size xxs.

    22. ciggy54 on

      Drew Barrymore and Melissa Auf der Maur sitting there crying about social media and teenage girls. How is this that I grew up with (or shows like antm) any different? The problem is misogyny and that pre dates the god damned printing press. I’m not saying social media isn’t bad in it’s own way but the absolute hysteria is insane.

    23. bluebird2019xx on

      Not that this is the point, but that pic of Mariah Carey is like the most toned legs I’ve ever seen 

    24. pompeii1009 on

      Millennial here. I actively refuse to own a scale because I know I will obsess over the number. In college I dealt with some ED tendencies. Whenever I go to the doctor, I specifically ask not to be told my weight. I try to gauge my health on other factors including how quickly I get out of breath and how my clothes fit.

    25. InsideProgress1755 on

      The media was soooo gross back then. Not only the tabloids but the media and reporters were very comfortable fat shaming. I distinctly remember a Hilary duff interview when she was clearly in the midst of her eating disorder and the female reporters were telling her how good she looked and asking her what she did to get “healthy” (as if she were obese before 😏). She pretended like it was just normal things — eating healthy, water, etc. years later she had said that during that time her hands would cramp up a lot because she wasn’t getting proper nutrition 

    26. Cherrylalaxo on

      Literally cut photos out of these magazines and tabloids and made a whole journal of thinspo collages. We didn’t have any other alternative of what’s bodies could and did look like. This still impacts me greatly in my mid thirties. 
      I think it exists differently now, and as a whole society thankfully has a greater range of knowledge on how bodies actually look. 

    27. CurvyCupcakes on

      The tabloid trash magazines were disgustingly critical towards women in the early 2000s. They’d be at the end of the checkout lane in the grocery store and I’d flip through them. Pages and pages of actresses and pop stars with all their supposed “flaws” dramatically enlarged, circled and with arrows pointing to belly fat, flabby arms, cellulite on thighs and butt, etc. The main content of those mags was tearing women down. It was a crime to be a woman and have a normal body.

    28. basserpy on

      I can’t speak to the effects of ridiculous old ads from before I was born about how [“life is for the slim!”](https://www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolRidiculous/comments/1scxiam/fashion_is_for_the_slender_pepsicola/) or whatever, and am only Britney’s age myself, but I can say that the degree to which the entire national media transitioned one girl’s life from pop star teenage girl to ~LEGAL SEX OBJECT~ to object of derision for having gained like six pounds even struck me as bewildering, and I knew basically nothing about anything. I mean, I still know nothing about anything, but my point is that you’re not wrong, it was fucking brutal then, >!which doesn’t mean it wasn’t also brutal at other times, but it was brutal then.!<

    30. mauvebirdie on

      This absolutely fucked with my head seeing these posters and magazines day in and day out as a child. If you weren’t stick thin in the 2000s, you were considered fat.

    31. Tasty-Reserve-8739 on

      I was a size 2 and my parents would call me fat during this era in my life. My friends were all size 0 or 2. I subscribed to all these tabloids and fitness magazines and created a whole binder of clipped “healthy” recipes from the magazines (this is before MySpace even). Didn’t even remember it until now and I’m in my 40s. Such a sad time for girls and women. No wonder I blocked it out of my mind

    32. bpdcryptid on

      oh yeah I was a member of a very popular ED forum that had a whole section for “themed” restrictive diets – based on celebrities, musicians, movies, tv shows, etc. tumblr had quite a few as well

    33. VCR_Samurai on

       Britney was doing hours and hours of choreography for her tours, which completely justified the calories she was taking in, and they still called her fat because they got photos of her lower belly looking a little bloated. It fills me with rage. For her, for the little me who was taking in this media, and for all young femmes who’ve put up with this. 

      And then not long after this these *same* magazines would do “what I eat in a day” articles with Olympians like Michael phelps, who were super lean but were also eating like 10k cals/day to keep up with their sport and going “wow! That’s amazing!”

    34. doctorpotters on

      the second slide got that subtle special k shoutout and oof i thought at 13 chubby and crying that special k would cure me

    36. No_Distance2904 on

      I was a kid around this time and it was sooo bad… looking back at pictures of myself I don’t understand how adults felt comfortable being so mean to a little girl, calling her names like pig, fatass, cow, coming from my parent and family. I haven’t recovered from this and I’m 23, overweight with a lot of weight fluctuation bc I haven’t been able to heal my relationship with food and it triggers me so much. Media was f*cked up and I hate that this is coming back again and with ozempic it may be even worse

    38. Lost-Opinion-9234 on

      Because of these Epstein-core fucking mags I had an eating disorder by the time I was 12.

    40. AggressivelyHelpful on

      What’s striking to me in these images are how women just clearly can’t win either way. If you are “too fat”, they’ll mock you. “Too thin”, they’ll mock you. It’s genuinely head-spinning that there is an article mocking women’s cellulite pointing it out on someone ACTIVELY running. Like there is simply no winning, the misogyny is the point.

    41. RoguePlanet2 on

      So I could look like Britney in her prime by eating fried food, pizza, and Jamba Juice?! This is the best news I’ve heard in a LONG time!! 😱

    43. carolinagypsy on

      LOOK AT THIS CLIP! Calling Mariah’s legs fat and then also slut shaming a dress that covers everything.

      Yes. It was awful to live through. I was a teen and early 20s in the 90s. And don’t think your fellow women were there to support you. If you look, that article about Brit is written by a woman. We policed the hell out of each other. All of the actresses and singers were malnourished looking they were so thin.

      And if the mags and tv didn’t get you, the clothes available to buy made sure to do it. There were a few years that you could not find anything but hip hugger low cut jeans. I had one pair that didn’t even have a zipper bc putting one in would have been a two or three inch zipper. And somehow we rationalized even teens wearing jeans that you had to either choose to wear a pretty thong or no underwear. Those pants would show off whatever underwear you were wearing. Baby doll shirts that exposed most of your back and stomach. Bandeau and halter tops that barely had straps to tie and no fabric in the back, so be careful how you move!

      I thought it missed me. I was lucky enough that I actually fit into all of that with not a lot of effort. And I stayed the same size for YEARS. But about 35 the birth control I was on made me gain weight. A whole. Effing. Pants. Size. 2 if it was a super bloaty hormone time of the month. And I was SO upset. I would ask my husband if I truly looked ok and he was literally like, “I seriously don’t notice a difference bc it’s ONE size!”

      Between that and over-plucking my brows bc that was the style, I seriously hope we are all collectively past that kind of a mindset.

      Don’t over-pluck your brows. Eat the damn dessert. Drink water. That’s my life advice now. Fuck it lol. 😂

    44. Cigarette-milk on

      People hate on the body positivity movement, but it really helped to stop shit like this from being “news”

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