Is Skinny Making a Comeback? Why the Return of Thinness Is Harming Perimenopausal Women

Is Skinny Making a Comeback? Why the Return of Thinness Is Harming Perimenopausal Women

If you’ve felt a familiar tightening in your chest lately while scrolling social media, you’re not imagining it.

The messaging around bodies is shifting again. Thinness is quietly being praised. “Getting your body back” is suddenly everywhere. Weight loss is being framed as the ultimate marker of health, discipline, and success. For many women in perimenopause, this feels deeply unsettling. Not because it’s new, but because it’s painfully familiar.

For those of us who grew up in the 90s and early 2000s, this era echoes a time when heroin chic, ultra-low-rise jeans, diet points, and slogans like “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” shaped how we learned to relate to our bodies. Thinness wasn’t just preferred, it was moralised. Being smaller meant being better.

So when thinness starts creeping back into the cultural conversation, it doesn’t land neutrally. It reopens old patterns, beliefs and wounds. In perimenopause, that can be especially harmful.

Why Thinness Is Being Rebranded as “Health”

One of the most damaging shifts happening right now is the subtle merging of thinness with health.

Weight loss injections, particularly GLP-1 medications, have entered the mainstream conversation at speed. For some people, they are medically appropriate and genuinely helpful. But culturally, they’ve also changed the narrative. Weight loss is being presented as:

• Proof of self-care

• Evidence of “taking control”

• A sign of being proactive about health

When weight loss is framed this way, thinness quietly becomes a badge of virtue again. The problem is that health is complex, especially in midlife. Hormones are shifting, sleep is often disrupted, stress resilience changes, and your metabolism changes. None of this is solved by shrinking your body. Yet when thinness is praised as the ultimate outcome, women start believing that if they are not losing weight, they must be doing something wrong.

Why This Hits Perimenopausal Women Harder

Perimenopause is already a time when many women feel disconnected from their bodies.

Things that once “worked” stop working. Your appetite feels different, energy levels fluctuate, weight distribution changes, hunger and cravings can feel louder and less predictable. Layer diet-culture messaging on top of that, and it can be incredibly destabilising.

Women who spent decades trying to “be good” with food are suddenly told, again, that smaller is better, that control is the answer, and discipline equals worth. This isn’t just about body size. It’s about identity. When thinness equals goodness, and goodness equals safety, belonging, and approval, the nervous system listens. When thinness is linked to goodness, safety, and belonging, the nervous system responds by pushing women back towards control and restriction, and when their changing bodies can’t comply, that protection quickly turns into shame and self-blame.

The Psychological Cost of the Skinny Comeback

For many women, this messaging doesn’t spark motivation. It sparks shame.

It revives the inner critic that says:

• “Why can’t you just try harder? “

• “What’s wrong with you?”

• “Everyone else seems to manage.”

Instead of asking what the body needs, women turn inward and blame themselves.

• They internalise the struggle.

• They minimise their exhaustion.

• They dismiss their hunger.

• They override their intuition.

Slowly, without realising it, they slip back into old patterns of restriction, not because they want to, but because the culture is telling them they should and it triggers an emotional memory.

How Restriction Sneaks Back In

Restriction in midlife rarely looks dramatic. It often shows up quietly as:

• Skipping meals to “be sensible”

• Cutting carbs again “just to see”

• Ignoring hunger because it feels inconvenient

• Eating less during the day to compensate later

• Feeling guilty for wanting food

These behaviours may feel familiar. Almost comforting. They once gave a sense of control.

But in perimenopause, restriction often backfires. Restriction leads unstable blood sugar balance which means your cravings may intensify, your energy levels dip, your sleep may be disturbed which results in mood swings. Then the self-blame kicks in, again.

Why Thinness Does Not Equal Health in Midlife

Health in perimenopause is not about shrinking. It’s about:

• Stable energy

• Nourished muscles

• Balanced blood sugar

• Hormonal support

• Digestive resilience

• Mental clarity

• Emotional steadiness

None of these are guaranteed by weight loss. In fact, aggressive weight loss or chronic under-eating can make symptoms worse. It may increase stress hormones, and heighten fatigue and anxiety.

Yet the messaging rarely reflects this nuance. Thin bodies are still praised without context and struggling bodies are still judged without compassion.

The 90s Diet Culture Hangover

Women who grew up in the 90s didn’t just experience diet culture. They were shaped by it.

Many learned from a young age that:

• Hunger was something to ignore

• Smaller bodies were safer bodies

• Food needed to be earned

• Weight gain meant failure

Those beliefs don’t disappear just because we intellectually reject them, they live in the body. So when thinness re-enters the spotlight, it can activate deep, automatic responses, even in women who have done years of work to heal their relationship with food. This is not a personal failure, it’s conditioning.

GLP-1s and the Cultural Conversation

GLP-1 medications are complex. There is still a lot we don’t know about their long-term health effects, and for some people with complex medical needs, they can be helpful.

What matters is how they are being talked about. When weight loss is celebrated without the same attention given to nourishment, muscle preservation, mental health, or long-term sustainability, it reinforces the idea that the outcome matters more than the wider picture.

For perimenopausal women, this kind of messaging can be unhelpful.

How This Messaging Sets Women Back

When thinness is positioned as the goal, women often stop trusting their internal cues. Hunger is questioned, appetite is second-guessed, and eating becomes something to manage rather than respond to.

Instead of curiosity and nourishment, there is more mental effort spent controlling intake, delaying food, or trying to override what the body is asking for. A body already navigating hormonal change tends to respond with more intensity, not less.

A Kinder Reframe for Midlife Health

What if health in perimenopause wasn’t about fixing your body, but supporting it? What if the question shifted from “How do I lose weight? “ to “What helps me feel steadier, stronger, and more like myself?” That might look like:

• Eating enough protein to support muscle

• Eating regularly to stabilise blood sugar

• Choosing foods that actually satisfy

• Resting without guilt

• Letting your body change without punishment

This approach doesn’t promise a smaller body, it focuses on a more supported one.

You Are Not Behind. You Are Not Failing.

If the current “skinny comeback” messaging has stirred something uncomfortable in you, don’t view this as a weakness, see this as information. Your body remembers what restriction costs, your nervous system remembers what control felt like and your mind remembers how easily worth became tied to size. So, make a note of this, sit with it and choose not to go back there. This is an act of self-care.

Is skinny making a comeback? In many ways, yes but that doesn’t mean you have to participate. Perimenopause is not a problem to solve with restriction. It is a transition that asks for nourishment, patience, and respect. Your body is not a before-and-after project, it is a living, changing system doing its best. It deserves support, kindness and compassion.

If reading this has stirred something for you , old thoughts, old habits, or that familiar feeling of wondering whether you should be doing more , you don’t have to navigate that alone.

I work with perimenopausal women who want to step away from restriction, rebuild trust with their bodies, and find a way of eating that genuinely supports energy, hormones, and real life in midlife.

If you’d like calm, compassionate guidance, you’re very welcome to book a Complimentary Clarity Call. It’s simply a space to talk, be heard, and explore what support might look like for you. No pressure. No judgement. Just support.