How Women's Perfect Body Types Changed Throughout The Past Decade

Throughout the years, women's perfect body types have evolved, shifting as the societal ideas of what defines perfect have changed. As far as women's bodies are concerned, there hasn't really ever been a time when society didn't tell women what they were supposed to look like. As far back as the paleolithic era, there has been an ideal body type for women, and that hasn't really changed much throughout the course of history.

Specifically, over the course of the past ten years, the ideal female body type shifted several times. From what the media and women's' magazines declared to be beautiful to which images of celebrities who are at the top of their game circulated and so much more, a number of things influence the idea of how women are "supposed" to look like in today's day and age. While there is no such thing as the perfect female body, the idea of the perfect female body has definitely changed a lot.

While the Kardashian family might have helped to make the ideal woman's body curvier, magazines and other forms of media continued to promote a thin body type in 2011. No matter where you looked, it seemed as though the perfect body type was still to just be perfectly skinny. Though society had definitely started to come to the general understanding that the models in magazines had bodies that were almost impossible to get, not much changed. In fact, a 2011 study found that the images in magazines of women's' bodies seriously messed with real women's minds.

According to the study, published in Science Daily, when women looked at magazines "with thin, idealized body types" for five days, "something surprising happened: the readers' own body satisfaction improved." But that doesn't mean those women were content with how they looked. Per the study, "those women whose body satisfaction improved the most also were more likely to report that they engaged in dieting behaviors such as skipping meals or cutting carbohydrates during the course of the study." 

In 2011, the media's pressure to look thin was so strong that there was actual scientific proof that it caused women to diet.

In 2013, Kim Kardashian had a big year. That year alone, Kardashian welcomed her first child, North West; attended the Met Gala for the first time; and got engaged to the father of her daughter, Kanye West. So it's no accident that she also started trending worldwide after posting a photo of herself that could really only be described as a butt selfie, as reported by E! News.

In October 2013, Kardashian shared a selfie of herself wearing a tight one-piece swimsuit that perfectly showed off her, um, assets, including her behind and a good amount of side boob. The photo has racked up over 1 million likes since Kardashian posted it with the simple caption, "#NoFilter," and the post really started to hone in on the trend of having a big booty as part of the perfect body type. As Kardashian had given birth to her daughter earlier that year, her butt selfie soon became body goals for many women.

In the mid-2010s, a movement all about accepting one's body and remaining positive about it began to spread like wildfire. According to Kaila Prins, a body positive wellness coach and burlesque teacher, body positivity is "the idea that you can live comfortably in your body, as it is right now, or work on treating it right through nourishment and joyful movement and self care without punishing yourself for looking the way you do," as she told Psychology Today. Body positivity began to trend, and people clung to the idea that women's' bodies should be celebrated, no matter what they looked like. 

In a move perfectly aligned with the body-positivity movement, the female-oriented publication Women's Health announced it would no longer print the phrases "bikini body" or "drop two sizes" on its cover. However, as body positivity began to spread, Prins told Psychology Today that body positivity wasn't about not aiming to be healthy. "A common misconception is that body positivity is about 'letting yourself go,' or sitting on the couch eating junk food all day and not caring," she said. On the contrary, the body positivity movement was merely focused on not conforming to societal ideals of beauty.

Women's perfect body types really changed in 2017. As the body positivity movement continued to grow and expand, the fashion industry started to take part in the movement. While many models are still super thin and have largely unattainable body types, in 2017, the Council of Fashion Designers of America reminded designers ahead of New York Fashion Week that health was of the utmost concern when it came to their models.

According to Women's Wear Daily, Diane von Furstenberg and Steven Kolb sent an email to designers that stated the CFDA "will continue to grow its health and wellness initiatives through the CFDA Foundation + Equinox Coalition for Health as Beauty." Additionally, the email stated that "eating disorders are emotional disorders that have psychological, behavioral, social and physical manifestations, of which body weight is only one," once again maintaining that the health of the models walking the runway was to take precedence. In 2017, a healthy body was a perfect body.

Though body positivity was once super popular, in 2018, many people began to take notice of the movement's flaws. In fact, one former follower of the movement, Stephanie Yeboah, a plus-sized blogger and writer, spoke to The Guardian about how body positivity didn't work for her anymore. "It has become a buzzword, it has alienated the very people who created it," she told the publication. "Now, in order to be body positive, you have to be acceptably fat — size 16 and under, or white or very pretty. It's not a movement that I feel represents me any more." In place of body positivity came body neutrality.

Body neutrality allowed women to make peace with their bodies, without feeling like they had to change anything about it. That being said, in 2018, the perfect body type for women didn't really exist. Instead, feelings towards the ideal body were merely... neutral.

Really, there is no such thing as the perfect body type. Every woman has a beautiful body, and every body is a bikini body, no matter what. However, ideals still exist. And, as time goes on, certain body types definitely become more and more popular, but that doesn't mean one is better than the other. However, it's almost ingrained into peoples' minds to be curious about what shapes and sizes are deemed desirable by celebs and fashion magazines. 

Museum curator Emma McClendon, who organized an exhibit on fashion and women's bodies, told CNN, "Whether it's contemporary or 19th century, they want to know what size it is or what size it would correlate to, or what measurement it is." She continued, "We as a culture, as a society, are obsessed with size. It's become connected to our identity as people." However, it's so incredibly important to remember that your weight, size, or body type does not define you, and the perfect body doesn't exist. As time goes on, the ideal body type will continue to change because there isn't an actual ideal body out there. As society changes, so does the idea of what a woman's body is supposed to look like.