I don’t know about you, but these days I’m not sure whether I’m supposed to be aiming for Ozempic face or Brazilian Butt Lift butt. Or both? Probably both. There was a point in time when the fashion was to have the fat siphoned from your butt and injected into your face, but now I think it’s the other way around. You need an enormous arse and a face like Skeletor let loose with a contouring stick if you want to be on trend.
Such frankly bizarre beauty standards are nothing new. In the 1700s it was all about crushing your ribs so your top half looked like an ice cream cone with cherries on top. In the 1800s the fashion was to cover your face with lead paint and strap a load of cushions to your butt to give you the bustle-arse so coveted by Victorian tik-tokkers. A hundred years ago, tits were out of fashion, and arses too. The fashionable body shape was basically a two-by-four with a bob on top, doing the Charleston in a dress that looked like a lamp shade.
I was lucky enough to grow up in the seventies, when women of all shapes and sizes were finally permitted to wear trousers, although not at my school (unless you got a letter from your parents). I was keen on the wearing of trousers, despite the fact that many of mine were hand-me-downs from my older brother. It was to do with the practicalities, you see. When I was a little girl, I was frequently admonished for improprieties such as the way that I talked, ate, looked and stood—but especially how I sat. I was often told, “It’s not ladylike to sit with your legs open,” to which I responded, “Hey, I’m a little kid, not Sharon Stone, you weirdo.” Well, I would have done, were this reference not completely incomprehensible by virtue of the fact that the film it comes from would not be made until some decades in the future, by which time everyone had given up on getting me to keep my legs shut telling me what to do.
The need to be more like a lady was not something I felt very strongly, if at all. I wasn’t actually being trained in deportment in advance of being presented to the queen at a debutante ball, so I’m not sure why my parents attempted to impose Victorian-era levels of feminine modesty upon me. Okay, I do remember walking around with a book on my head, trying to improve my posture, and yes, I did want to go to a posh finishing school in Switzerland – but I think this was more to do with reading an illicit copy of Shirley Conran’s bonkbuster novel Lace than it was in preparation for being presented to a viscount. (The only viscounts I cared about were the mint biscuits.)
Once, when I was very little, I was required to attend a family wedding, and here I imagine my ability to be ladylike was at a rare premium. However, this was of no significance to me. I dressed in my usual jeans and jumper combo, probably sporting a grubby, unwashed face to top off the look. My mother found this unacceptable, and insisted that I put on a dress instead. I insisted that I didn’t want to do that, and we went round and round like this for a while until I eventually lost the argument. Or so my mother thought! In fact, I stomped off upstairs and—in a fit of Machiavellian genius—dressed myself in every single item of clothing I owned, then pulled a pretty dress on over the top. My mother was not amused.
Dresses and skirts were just not practical. I liked playing in mud, climbing trees, riding my bike, and not having to think about how I was sitting. I was not interested in adorning myself in pink frills and planning my future wedding to David Cassidy. So, trousers.
The first pair of trousers I vividly remember were ones that my mother made for me on her sewing machine. They were straight up and down with an elasticated waist, a bit shorter than they probably wanted to be, and they were made of tremendously bright lemon yellow waffle fabric. They made me feel a little queasy, but my mother had gone to all the trouble of making them, and she pronounced them very stylish, so I decided maybe I did like them after all, and took them out for a walk in the park. By the time I got to the bandstand, I had come to my senses and realised that if anyone saw me wearing these God-awful lemon yellow trousers, I would have to claim to be my own evil twin who had dressed up specifically for the purpose of ruining my life.
A pair of trousers I did really like were my black satin Olivia Newton John in Grease disco trousers. I chiefly remember these because one day my mother decided I was too fat to wear them, and donated them to a jumble sale where they were bought by school bully Vanessa, a thin child who flaunted her thin arse in my satin trousers most days until she got bored of them. In later years I would be triggered into horrific memories of this time when a so-called ‘friend’ admired my baggy orange tie-dye trousers so much that she had to go and buy her own pair which looked about twelve times better on her small bottom than they did on my considerably larger one, thus rendering my own pair of trousers completely unwearable. (We did stay friends for a while after this betrayal, but things were never the same. I hear she still has the trousers.)
But now the circle has come around. I don’t need a Brazilian Butt Lift to have a fashionable backside in 2024. It may in fact be the first time any of my body parts have been on trend. But even this is not without its downsides. If you have trendy buttocks, you probably don’t have a fashionable face that looks like a butternut squash with all the flesh scooped out. And you almost definitely won’t have an up-to-the-minute thigh gap.
Listen, there are women in this world whose thighs do not rub together when they walk. I am not one of those women. I am the other kind of woman. The kind who needs a new pair of jeans every eight weeks because, merely by walking around, I’ve worn away the fabric at the crotch, and parts of my actual thighs start bulging out like pale slugs to be tormented by friction burns. There are few things worse than a chafed thigh in the cold English winter—although having to spend yet another £17.50 on a pair of jeggings that some skinny-arsed thigh-gap wanker on Mumsnet says should last me for five or six years is definitely up there.
At some point in the near future I expect my arse will once again be dreadfully uncool. And as I make my way womanfully through middle age, no doubt all of my body parts will soon be considered passé. I’m holding out hope for some of the more obscure bits, though. Elbows, for example, are yet to have a moment. The backs of my knees are still looking good. And I reckon I could give any Vogue model a run for her money when the lady moustache finally comes back into style.
Honestly the lemon yellow trousers sound kind of punk rock.
BRING BACK TOGAS!!!