Different ideal, same pressure: Gen Z’s fixation on ‘perfect’ skin echoes millennials’ obsession on being thin

“My hipbone: I spent my teenage years obsessed with it,” says Marina (not her real name, 41). At the time, around the turn of the century, she devoured fashion magazines and music videos, almost unconsciously idealizing the major trend of the time. It wasn’t the low-rise trousers (which were also popular), but rather the sharp, prominent hipbone that would jut out from the waistband of pants or peek out from beneath satin dresses. Today, 25 years later, she still thinks about it.

That look defined the beauty ideals of an entire generation — the millennial generation — which grew up surrounded by an unprecedented visual culture. While Natasha Poly strutted down runways around 2005, her hipbones sharply visible as she moved to the beat, Christina Aguilera sang in a size zero, and cereal commercials on TV urged viewers to skip dinner to lose weight. Meanwhile, on Sex and the City, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) was called a “fat ass” (Season 5, Episode 3, “An Old Lady’s Fortune”). From the very first season of the show, Charlotte (Kristin Davis) complained that she hated thighs, admitting that she couldn’t flip through a fashion magazine without thinking “thighs, thighs, thighs.”

Victoria Beckham was weighed live on a British television show just two months after giving birth to her first child, Brooklyn, in 1999, to “check if she had regained her weight” (you can watch the video here). Gossip magazines demonized celebrities' cellulite on their covers, and Friends made jokes about “Fat Monica.”

The first stylist to the stars, who had become a celebrity herself, was Rachel Zoe and her clients gained style at the same rate as they lost weight: Nicole Richie was the most famous. A review of the New York spring/summer 2007 shows raised alarm at the models' extreme thinness: Their knees and elbows were larger than their concave thighs and pipe cleaner arms, and their bobbling heads looked as if a slight breeze could detach them from their frail bodies.”

And then came the definitive phrase: “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels,” which Kate Moss — the greatest exponent of heroin chic, as the dangerous fashion was called — regretted years later. At that time, thinness was more than just a desirable physical trait: it was a sign of status.

It gained unprecedented visibility, but it wasn’t a new concept. A similar sentiment had been expressed by Ivana Trump in 1986 when she told journalists, “Being hungry makes me feel powerful.” An article published in 1991 in The New York Times referred to “the 20-year reign of an anorexic aesthetic.” At the time, the piece notes, more than half of U.S. women between the ages of 10 and 30 suffered from an eating disorder, a figure that had skyrocketed since the 1970s, known as the decade of slimness. If you weren’t thin, you were out. How could you not obsess over your hipbone?

With the celebrity obsession of the 2000s, and a beauty ideal that was “all bone, collarbones and jutting hips,” as The Guardian described it, body-shaming culture reached its cruelest levels. In 2004, British magazine Heat ran a special on cellulite, marking with white circles the imperfections they had found on women like Beyoncé and Jennifer Lopez. “ For teenage girls, the message was circled in white on the cover of our favourite mags: if your thighs touched, you weren’t trying hard enough,” says the article, noting that many girls had eating disorders, as if this were a normal part of adolescence.

Today, the youngest generations, Z and Alpha, have grown up hearing about body positivity. They are learning that all bodies are accepted and that their worth isn’t for anyone to judge, especially when that judgment is unsolicited. However, as The New York Times highlights in a recent column (Toxic Beauty Standards Can Be Passed Down), these efforts have not managed to free them from their own aesthetic obsessions. Now, the focus has shifted to skin: texture has become a social sin, and pores are viewed as a condemnation — wrinkles and expression lines, even worse. Just take a look at the endless TikToks dedicated to this issue. The underlying pressure may have shifted, but the narrative remains the same, and it’s speeding up.

In recent years, we’ve witnessed the rise of the “Sephora Kids” — mostly young girls who, as early as 10 or 12, spend their Saturday afternoons in cosmetics chains like Sephora, or its competitors, admiring facial cleansers and makeup products as part of their leisure time. They then return home to carry out extensive skincare routines, hoping to achieve that impossible standard: skin that looks as “perfect” as the ones they see on social media.

What they don’t yet realize is that they will probably never attain it, just as most millennials couldn’t achieve the slenderness of models like Anja Rubik, Annabela Belikova, Magdalena Frackoviac, Vlada Roslyakova, Abbey Lee Kershaw, or Sasha Pivovarova — icons of the so-called “Slavic era” of fashion. Yet, this pursuit can become a dangerous companion, one that lingers into adulthood.

How the 2000s thinness myth was built

Federico Antelo, Director of the IED Madrid Fashion School, artist, and textile designer, believes the ideal of thinness in the early 2000s was driven by the natural desire for change that defines the fashion world. “Every time there is a paradigm shift or a new worldview emerges, it is often accompanied by an aesthetic schism that reflects that transformation,” he explains. “Thinness is the answer to the unattainable stereotype of the supermodels of the 1990s, that rosy, curvy health of Claudia Schiffer.”

He points out three key designers whose aesthetics shaped the obsession with size zero in the 2000s: John Galliano for Dior, particularly in his haute couture shows; Alexander McQueen’s collections; and Tom Ford’s designs for Gucci. These designers, with their razor-thin models like Kristen McMenamy and Hanne Gaby Odiele, became the faces of a new, almost alien standard of beauty.

“The 2000s were a time that left out any kind of voluptuousness, even the dream team of the top models of the 19990s stopped working, at least for a while,” he says.

In popular culture, there were also very thin celebrities: the Olsen sisters, Nicole Richie, Paris Hilton, Mischa Barton, and Lindsay Lohan, who has recently transitioned from being a symbol of thinness to one of unattainable, unrealistic skin.

Then came the Abercrombie phenomenon, a brand that catered exclusively to “hot” boys and girls, and the Victoria’s Secret craze — where models would share their extreme diets and fasting regimens leading up to the fashion show. It was during this time that the term “thinspo” was born on platforms like Tumblr.

Meanwhile, in food and drink advertisements, thinness was constantly promoted as the ideal (just look up YouTube ads for whole grain cereals from that era, which would be unthinkable today). These young women weren’t taught to fear aging, as we are today, but instead, to fear gaining weight.

“We’ve heard it, and we’ve believed it, but beauty stereotypes are nothing more than cultural constructs, which sometimes persist so long that they attain a level of truth that doesn’t correspond to them,” says Federico Antelo.

Clinical psychologist Ana Kovacs points out that “when beliefs about food and body image become social and cultural discourses, they come to define an identity for a generation, an era or a country.” She further clarifies that “on a psychological level, the possible ‘mark’ that these discourses may have will depend on other, deeper variables at an individual level, such as personal history, vulnerabilities, etc.”

“Over the years, the message has changed […], but the basic idea is the same: we are a failure,” adds the psychologist. “In the consultation, and in different ways, there are common and very common elements: lack of self-esteem, the idea of inadequacy and dissatisfaction […] And although these ‘cultures’ that we build can influence our mental health, it is not so clear that they are the only causes. What is evident is that the market finds a gold mine here, offering every remedy to heal a void that needs to be filled.”

Pores, wrinkles and teenage obsessions

For women in their thirties today, butter was once their teenage enemy; now, wrinkles are the new villain for Generation Z and Alpha. A recent TikTok video, which has garnered more than eight million views, features a 28-year-old woman showing her face without any editing, makeup, or anti-aging procedures like Botox or fillers.

The 18,000 comments on the video offer a revealing look into our current cultural moment: while some users praise the woman’s “courage” to show herself as she is, others express horror, praying “never to look like that,” while others share their personal struggles. One user, @feebie_jo, writes: “I don’t know why, but this made me cry. I’m 24 and I’ve started to notice those same lines around my eyes, and I try to remind myself that it’s normal, but the deeply ingrained beauty standards make it hard to accept that I’m getting older. I think this made me feel relieved. You are so beautiful, thank you.”

Since then, countless TikTok videos have contributed to the increasing consumption and internalization of beauty standards, with easy access to shopping posts for anti-aging products and cosmetic procedures. Members of these generations are being introduced to the idea of starting intense cosmetic treatments and routines early as a form of preventative care. They’re growing up in a social media culture that relentlessly promotes the pursuit of youthful skin.

As Verónica M. Garrido discussed in EL PAÍS, children mimic what they see, and in the age of the internet, that means they see obsessive habits around perfection and beauty. “Skincare culture” is a rising trend of sharing complex routines that involve a slew of products — serum, retinol, collagen, peeling, hyaluronic acid — terms that have become part of everyday language. This obsession with skincare, combined with social pressure to look flawless, has given rise to a new phenomenon called cosmeticorexia, defined as the excessive buying and use of skincare products.

Garrido also explains the Sephora Kids phenomenon: “This trend has spread primarily among young girls and pre-teens, who are becoming hooked on cosmetics they don’t need. This behavior is altering typical age-related behavior and can have lasting effects on their health.”

Skin care specialists are increasingly warning of a rise in cases of irritation, acne, and dermatitis among young people who are using products with highly potent ingredients in an attempt to replicate the routines of influencers.

“It makes no sense for pre-teen girls to wear makeup or start ‘beauty routines’ or ‘anti-aging routines.’ We are seeing more and more pre-teens in consultations for skin problems that stem from these routines,” says Dr. Marta González, Director of the Aesthetic Medicine Unit at the Ricart Medical Institute, a specialist in Medical-Surgical Dermatology and Aesthetic Medicine, with a focus on pre-adolescent and youth skin.

A recent study in the United States addresses the causes and effects of this phenomenon: cosmetics contain ingredients that are toxic to minors or have very potent active ingredients, resulting in a rise in contact dermatitis.

“Children have more sensitive and thinner skin than adults and are also more prone to developing eczema or atopic dermatitis,” explains Dr. González. “In pre-adolescents [children between nine and 12 years old], puberty brings hormonal changes, which can increase the skin’s production of sebum, causing the skin to become oily and even leading to acne. In our clinics, we have noticed an increase in consultations from adolescents with skin problems caused by the incorrect or excessive use of cosmetics [such as retinol, alpha hydroxy acids, and anti-aging products] which can damage the skin barrier, and cause irritation, eczema, and acne breakouts.”

She advises: “In general, during puberty, a simple routine is best — using a mild cleanser, moisturizing with non-comedogenic products, and applying sun protection.”

The problem, dermatologists explain, is that many minors use products they don’t need, such as retinol, hyaluronic acid, or anti-wrinkle creams — ingredients that shouldn’t be part of a skincare routine before the age of 25 or 30.

Beyond potential skin damage, these trends can impact self-esteem. The pursuit of flawless, poreless skin is unrealistic — imperfections and texture are natural. While each generation’s beauty standards reflect its social and technological landscape, it’s worth asking whether they also perpetuate a cycle of dissatisfaction and pressure.

The skincare market, however, continues to grow. According to Statista, global sales of skincare products for children and babies reached approximately $4.135 billion in 2021, an increase of nearly $233 million from the previous year. Statista projects that the market will expand further, reaching around $5.6 billion by 2026.

In December 2024, Drunk Elephant — a brand popular among tweens — posted a list of products labeled as safe for young skin on Instagram. Buying a lip gloss for a 10-year-old may seem harmless, but in today’s climate, it’s worth considering whether it sets the stage for a 15-year-old worrying about wrinkles on TikTok. Perhaps it’s time to rethink how to minimize harm to the next generation.

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