Not All That Glitters is Gold
The Y2K era has been heavily romanticized on social media - the glamorous outfits, the celebrity drama, the aesthetic - it all looks so cool, especially to Gen Z. Y2K, also known as the Year 2000 problem, was the belief that as the calendar date switched to January 1st, 2000, computers would reset back to January 1st, 1900, causing issues for banks, nuclear plants, transportation, and anything that relied on the computers; leading to a worldwide meltdown. Luckily, Y2K never happened, allowing everyone to feel a collective sense of relief and hope, which brought on a collective carefree spirit. Pop culture was at its peak, with Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie’s very public fallout, Kanye’s debut album, “The College Dropout '' released to critical acclaim, and Arnold Schwarzenegger becoming the governor of California. The fashion world would see some of its most iconic styles form, with the glittery chains and tastefully trashy styles of the McBling era. There was emo subculture’s dark, androgynous look that saw a revival from its roots in the 70’s DC Hardcore Scene (as well as its less depressed, younger cousin, Scene, gaining popularity in its own circles) and the all too infamous Y2K style all coexisting. Looking back at the period, it is no surprise that the glitz and glamor of the early 2000s are looked upon with so much adoration.
Unfortunately, not all that glitters is gold; the era was plagued by swarms of social issues. Misogyny, unhealthy body standards, and a variety of “-isms” permeated every crack of society. The alluring image of the sophisticated, beautiful high fashion model led teenage girls everywhere to idolize these women and take their words as gospel. This created a beauty standard that was very White and very skinny, with people everywhere internalizing the image of unattainable beauty these models represented. As a result, styles like “heroin chic” (made distinctive by models’ pale skin, extreme skinniness, and androgyny) were extremely prevalent in the 1990s. The 2000s would see this become even more mainstream as skin-tight, low-rise jeans, baby tees, and exposed midriffs made skinny bodies the standard. The later 2000s would see the rise of communities on sites like Tumblr that promoted eating disorders with “thinspo” posts. Kate Moss’s infamous quote, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels,” is the perfect summary of the damaging effects of this toxic mindset.
Fast forward to 2020, when Y2K is experiencing a huge resurgence and the early 2000s are heavily romanticized; these biases are starting to form once again. As older silhouettes become popular again, so do the attitudes attached to those looks. The anxiety associated with feeling pressure to wear more revealing and form-fitting clothes that display natural bodies leads to feeling the need to match the prominent beauty standard in order to “fit” in. This has had a profound effect, with eating disorders in teenagers having gone up 107.4% between 2018 and 2022. Weight loss drugs like Ozempic are also becoming more popular as more celebrities tout the appetite suppressant, causing a spike in prescriptions for the drug. Websites like Twitter, now X, are seeing a resurgence of communities dedicated to promoting eating disorders and skinniness. Eating disorder Twitter (or EDTwt for short) is a hashtag that attracts people suffering from disorders like anorexia and bulimia, particularly teenagers and young adults. The tag features “thinspo” threads and accounts dedicated to promoting dieting and exercise plans that are often extremely unhealthy. These pages often use the late 1990s and early 2000s models as motivation to continue with their unhealthy habits in order to lose weight or keep it off, and many of these attitudes are reminiscent of those that plagued the early 2000s.
The early 2000s was further characterized by rampant racism and xenophobia. September 11, 2001, caused some of the worst xenophobia the country had seen in decades; anyone with a “Muslim” sounding name or Middle Eastern features was discriminated against, humiliated, and, in many cases, a victim of hate crime. Hispanics have also been routinely ignored and erased from the history of emo culture despite making up such an integral part of the community and subculture. Emo took over Mexico in the early 2000s, with many of their youth finding solace in the darker, more emotionally driven parts of the music, while also finding a love for the subculture’s style of dress. Bands like Pxndx and Volován became cultural phenomena in Mexico. Emo was such a large part of youth culture in Mexico, that “wars” broke out between emos and punks, who saw them as posers and misfits. Colorism was extremely prevalent, with popular movies and tv shows like Norbit, and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which used darker-skinned features as the butt of the joke. These jokes often depicted darker-skinned women as “manly” or “ghetto”. Many actors were also typecasted to these roles, further entrenching these stereotypes.
High fashion was notorious for promoting colorist ideals of what “beauty” was expected to be. “Only three of the eighty-one cover models were black” for Vogue between 2000 and 2005. Overall, lighter-skinned women were deemed more “feminine” and “model-like” compared to their darker-skinned counterparts. As time went on, however, it seemed like colorism was starting to lose its grip on the pop culture world as more dark-skinned men and women were celebrated in fashion, music, movies, and general pop culture. Although racism and colorism in media are certainly becoming less acceptable, social media is seeing these attitudes appear in much more subtle ways. Trends like the “vanilla girl aesthetic,” “deer vs. cat pretty,” and “boy vs. girl pretty” may promote the idea that lighter-skinned women possess a different, more “pure” type of beauty. Trends like these can group people into different “categories” based on their natural features and, unfortunately, promote harmful stereotypes to an extremely young and impressionable audience.
Despite the resurgence of these harmful ideals, society is still leaps and bounds ahead of where it used to be. These attitudes are being critically analyzed in an ongoing effort to distinguish the positive aspects of the past from the ugly ones that attached themselves to these trends.
Written by Zeeshan Khan, Photography: Ezra Huang, Social Media: Bella Hanson, Videography: Tristan Nigos, Styling: Sophia Villarreal