The 90s diet culture that ruled my teens is regaining traction online - which is why embracing diverse body types is more important than ever

I always loved movement as a kid. Sure, I wasn’t the most coordinated, and I often got a little intimidated by group games, but I loved dancing. I did disco dance to silver level, ballet to grade five, and even tried my hand at tap dance. My weekly lessons brought me joy, made me feel good, and meant I spent many a Saturday side stage at village fairs, ballet pumps on, waiting for my music cue.

That was, until the age of around ten, when I started to feel self-conscious in a leotard. I vividly remember lying in bed one night, having flipped through one of my Mum’s magazines. There was an entire six-page spread dedicated to rating female celebrities' bodies from best to worst. Convinced that my body was “too big” and on the “worst” end of the completely arbitrary - but seriously damaging nonetheless - scale, I quit ballet for good, hanging up my pointe shoes and retreating into myself.

I don’t think I liked my body for a good fifteen or so years after that point. Everywhere I looked, the mainstream media was portraying thinness as the ultimate goal, a social must-have to be met at all costs. Yet, as a teenager with newly-diagnosed PCOS, my body wasn’t ever going to look like the models in those magazines.

I wish I could go back now and tell my teenage self that it’s okay for your body to be different - that actually, our genetics mean that everyone’s bodies are unique, and there’s power in our individuality. But more than that, I wish I could tell her that your weight doesn’t define your worth, that you’ll reach a blissful point of total body neutrality near your 30th birthday, and that one day, you’ll fall in love with movement and how it makes you feel, not look, so much that it’s a huge part of your career.

Sadly, I’m far from being the only woman who didn’t see themselves portrayed in movies or the media as a kid. Speaking to the MC UK team, almost every staffer has their own story - many didn’t see bodies that looked like theirs, others, racial diversity in their schools or on screen, and a few, role models with accents that sounded like their own.

Below, I share their stories - the lack of representation, the knock-on effect that it inevitably has, and the current statistics on how the tide is turning. Because if you can’t see it, you can’t be it - and we all have a responsibility to do better.

Having diverse role models is critically important for young girls - and we should know

Shopping Editor Amelia Yeomans remembers feeling negatively about her own body from the age of seven years old. “Not only was there a severe lack of body diversity in the media when I was growing up, but there was also a noticeable absence of celebrated women in mainstream sports to look up to,” she shares. “The likelihood of me ending up as a pro footballer was virtually zero anyway, but I still regularly think about how my attitude towards sports and my body image would have been different had I seen women like me in these spaces as a child."

News Editor Jadie Troy-Pryde agrees, adding that the toxic diet culture of our youth has left many teenagers desperately trying to shrink their bodies to feel “normal.” “The messaging in the 90s and 00s was insidious and has left a decades-long imprint on my own body image,” she admits. “I wish I’d seen women with different body types as a young girl, and now - as the world swings back into thin-spiration territory - representation is crucial.”

For Senior Beauty Writer Lollie King, it was a lack of racial diversity that knocked her confidence as a young girl. “Growing up in a predominantly white area and attending a predominantly white school, I know all too well that you can't be what you can't see. I remember feeling so insecure hearing the stereotypes that were enforced simply because of the colour of my skin.”

It isn't just visual representation that matters, though, and being able to see people who look like you is just one piece of the puzzle. Having role models who sound like you is equally important for self-confidence. As someone who studied linguistics at university, I know all too well how much humans automatically make cultural class assumptions based on accent - and how much of a psychological impact this can have on a person with a slightly "different" dialect.

Fashion Writer Sofia Piza has experienced this first hand. “As a Mexican expat who grew up moving to different countries, I had to learn English quite quickly. Having attended schools that deducted points if my English pronunciation wasn't 'fluent enough,' I learned to loathe my accent from a young age,” she shares. “It wasn't until I started watching movies like Salma Hayek's Beatriz At Dinner that I began celebrating my accent whenever Latin women would come on screen. Being exposed to media that propelled Latin women to speak in their natural accents without judgment helped me accept and embrace my own, making me proud of being a bilingual woman who now confidently works in their second language.”

While the tide is definitely turning, with women like our new Marie Claire UK cover star Ilona Maher reminding the world that every body is different, there’s still a long way to go before young kids are completely protected from arbitrary body ideals and social standards. Fat loss glamorisation is simmering in the social consciousness this year, and I’d hazard a guess that the sharp rise in interest in weight loss jab Ozempic has something to do with it.

Troy-Pryde echoes my concern, which is that her nieces will have to deal with the same toxic environment we did, ending up with similar body hang-ups and barriers to entry. “I don’t want my nieces growing up in the same throes of toxic diet culture that I suffered through, and more than just seeing inspiring women, we desperately need their voices, too,” she shares. “If we can encourage young people to think of themselves as more than their weight, with representation in the media leading the charge, then perhaps they’ll arrive at a place of body neutrality where the focus is, instead, on the amazing things that they can do.”

For King, she’s making a concerted effort to be the role model she wishes she’d seen growing up. “Now, when I'm in spaces where I'm the only one, I remember it has to start somewhere,” she shares. “Really, I'm doing it for my inner child and all the other children who look like me.”

I hope I'm doing my bit, too. I've built my entire career around reminding women that every body is different, beautiful, and worthy of love; that movement is your friend, not your enemy; and that there's no such thing as a "good" or "bad" food group. If this message reaches and changes the life of even one woman, I'll be happy. Because there's real peace to be found when you learn to love yourself.