Why Are Women’s Bodies Still Treated Like Trends?

I’ve not been watching the latest series of I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here ( watching people eat camel balls makes me feel sick), but I have seen the headlines and have read them with exasperation. Not because of the show itself, but because of what happens outside of it, because the moment a woman appears on TV, the same tired narrative emerges like clockwork.

Kelly Brook has been criticised for gaining weight (she is in her 40s, compared to the photos people are pulling from her early twenties). Meanwhile, Vogue Williams has been slated for being too thin. One woman is “a bag of bones,” the other is “fat.” And if it isn’t infuriating enough that the media still frames women’s bodies like they’re up for public referendum, the comments sections manage to hit a new low every time.

I keep thinking: Why are women’s bodies still treated as trends? Why is weight still presented as a moral barometer? Why, in 2025, is this nonsense still happening?

And perhaps the harder question:
Why are women being so mean to each other?

The impossible spectrum

Somewhere along the line, the conversation around women’s bodies flattened into an impossible spectrum: too much or not enough. Too curvy or too bony. Too old or too preserved. Too natural or too “worked on.”

The boundary keeps shifting, and women keep getting pushed off it.

One minute “heroin chic” is back, the next “hourglass” is the ideal, then “strong not skinny,” then whatever the algorithm has decided sells more products that day. And women are expected to casually embody these trends like they’re seasonal nail colours.

Bodies are not aesthetics. They are not cultural accessories. They are not fashion cycles.

Yet here we are again, watching women on TV being pulled apart by the media, and maybe worse by other women in the comments.

And in these conversations and comments, there’s the phrase that gets tossed around as if it’s empowering when really it’s just another form of gatekeeping: “real women” or “a real woman’s body.” The media loves it, and so do the public, usually whenever they want to praise one type of body by quietly shaming another. But here’s the thing: if a body belongs to a woman, it is a real woman’s body. Full stop. A model isn’t any less real because she’s slim, or toned, or fits a certain beauty ideal. And a woman with curves isn’t more authentic or more “natural” simply because she doesn’t. The term pretends to uplift, but all it really does is draw more lines between us.

Where does it come from?

Some of this is conditioning. When beauty is positioned as currency, it’s not surprising that people internalise scarcity: if someone else is praised, where does that leave me? If another woman is beautiful, does that make me less so?

However, this is exactly the lie we were sold: that women should compete with one another. That our value is comparative. That if one woman shines, another must dim.

But, to paraphrase Mean Girls:
Calling someone ugly doesn’t make you prettier.

Calling someone fat doesn’t make you thinner.

Tearing down another woman’s body doesn’t elevate yours. It only reinforces the system that harms us all.

We deserve better conversations

It is entirely possible, radical, even, to see women as whole humans rather than shapes to critique. To acknowledge that bodies change with age, stress, motherhood, hormones, health, and time. To stop comparing women to their 22-year-old selves like it’s some kind of personal failure to grow up.

And maybe, just maybe, to stop pretending that women owe the world a particular silhouette.

So what do we do?

We recognise the pattern.
We refuse to play the game.

We stop treating strangers’ bodies as public entertainment.
And we remember something simple but important:
The real rebellion is stepping out of the comparison trap entirely.

Because women have enough to deal with without having to carry the weight of everyone’s opinions too.