“Ballet Body”: Please not another body trend!

Muscular and slim like in the 80s, thin like heroin addicts in the style of the 90s or hourglass shaped like in the 2000s - body images develop, go away and repeat themselves.

But now there is a new ideal of beauty that has come to undermine our self-esteem - at least if the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) is to be believed. The organization named the new popular look “Ballet Body” in its 2023 annual procedure report. The report says: “Being dangerously thin is in again.”

In fact, thinness has been making a comeback for a while now – at least among those who can afford it. Because we learned in the 90s at the latest that the four-week crash diet doesn't help in the long term. But who needs a diet when you can have thin injections and suction? Thanks to Ozempic and cosmetic surgery, the perfect body is now just a question of money.

Last year, according to the ASPS, liposuction, breast augmentation and tummy tucks were the most popular surgeries in the United States. In addition, smaller, surgically shaped breasts and buttocks are becoming increasingly popular among women. The complete opposite of the Brazilian Butt Lift, which was considered beautiful until recently.

For theperfectFor the “Ballet Body” it is not enough to “just” be thin, you should also be well shaped and defined. The ideal body of a ballerina includes an extremely slim waist. The Ballet Body acts as if it were about fitness - when in fact it is just the idealization of being slim.

In a society where women's bodies are products, they are subject to trends just as much as clothing or home decor. It's always been that way. In the Victorian era, tuberculosis raged in Europe and America. The symptoms that the women showed as they “wasted away” were declared to be the ideal of beauty: a pale complexion combined with a slightly glassy look in the eyes.

Those who weren't sick gave themselves drops of black belladonna to give themselves the slightly distant look of someone suffering from tuberculosis. It's just unfortunate that the liquid is very toxic and can cause blindness. In non-sick people, the pallor was also caused by the poison arsenic.

Baroque women used crinolines and corsets to create a perfect hourglass figure. The flapper girls of the 20s had more androgynous bodies, while Marilyn Monroe brought back the curves. So it goes on and on. It's a constant cycle of curvy and skinny that we as women are trapped in. Our bodies are always either too thin or not thin enough - depending on which famous person is being emulated.

The fact that we have an idea of ​​how we find our own body beautiful is not a bad thing. Every woman should be able to decide for herself whether and how she wants to change her own body. But when thinness becomes a trend, it can become toxic for some. The dangerous thing about cosmetic injections and operations is that they treat areas where there is no problem. It's not our own body that needs this change, but our view of it.

So a few pretend to have a dream body - and too many emulate it. The pressure that ideals of beauty put on us is so great that it drives many people into eating disorders. That's why it's important that we keep reminding ourselves: the ballet body is just a trend that will pass. And nothing where you drill your body in an unnatural way. It's not for nothing that real ballerinas need decades of training at a performance level to look like this without any surgeries or injections.