Why Does It Feel Like the 90s Again? Skinny Celebrities, Ozempic & Low-Rise Jeans

Why does it suddenly feel like we’re back in the 90s?

Skinny celebrities are everywhere. Ozempic dominates the headlines. Low-rise jeans are back. SkinnyTok is booming. And somehow, it feels like women are being told to shrink themselves all over again.

This week, we unpack the return of 90s body standards - from GLP-1s and celebrity culture to body positivity, and fashion that seems designed for one very specific body type.

Is this just nostalgia, or are we ignoring the lessons we were supposed to have learnt the first time around?

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

I don't know if it's just my algorithm, but suddenly everyone's super skinny, low-rise jeans are back, and I feel like I've been dropped into 1999 against my will. Hollywood spent years trying to convince us we'd move past toxic body culture. And just when we started celebrating that bodies come in all shapes and sizes, everyone got suspiciously tiny, and it feels like women are being told to shrink themselves all over again. Today we're asking, why does 2026 feel like a full-blown 90s reboot? And should we be leaning in or tuning out? Hi everyone, welcome back to Big Gainey Energy. I'm your host, Scotty, and I'm joined by my co-host Robert and Tess. Hi ladies! Hi! Hello! Today we are asking why it feels like we are reliving the 90s, but before we step back in time, Tess, what are we drinking?

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Well, if 2026 can recycle the 90s, then we can definitely bring back one of our favourite beverages from season one. We're talking skinny, we're talking jeans. So what better fit than skinny jeans gin from Winston Quinn? If you haven't checked out Megan Donsky's denim-inspired gin range yet, definitely give it a try. Today we've made some cocktails with it. What's everyone drinking today? Didn't we all make the same thing? I made my twists on it. It's a blackberry bramble, which is delicious.

SPEAKER_02 1:17

I have a blueberry bramble. Very nice.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Well, you guys obviously are rolling in the cash because blueberries were nine bucks a punnet. So they were not cheap. Well, good news is it still tastes delicious.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

It's pretty tasty. It's almost like a grown-up version of a blueberry vodka cruiser. Did you girls drink those back in the actual 90s? I did. I did drink one.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

I didn't drink blueberry ones, but I definitely drank cruiser's, yes. What was your flavour of choice? Uh watermelon is coming to mind. Was there a watermelon? I think there was.

SPEAKER_02 1:52

I don't remember a watermelon, but that's because I always went for passion fruit.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Yeah. That was my jam. I was a bit partial to a Bacardi breezer. And what were they called? Lemon Ruskies. Lemon Ruskies were my thing.

SPEAKER_02 2:07

I loved a lemon rusky. And then as I matured into my early 20s. Spurn off double black. Spoon-off black. Spurn-off double black.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

That's so funny, guys. What about you, rums? I was lemon ruskies all the way. Lemon Ruskies and then Spurn Off Double Black. I mean, the hangover's not great.

SPEAKER_02 2:32

No. And that was back when we could actually manage hangovers to get some like these days. It didn't matter if you're in bed for two days afterwards. Yes. Zero responsibilities. Love it. This is much nicer. And I don't think we're gonna feel quite as bad after drinking it. It's delicious. Alright, ladies, so let's dive in. What in the world is going on today? It's all feeling very familiar and not in a good way. More like in a very 90s way. And as someone who came of age in the actual 90s, I'm not sure we need to be revisiting that era.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Yeah. No. It was like my worst era. All the clothes were terrible. The fashion was just questionable. Do you remember Snap Pants? Yeah. Added our snap pants. They were so in. And I saw someone wearing it the other day, and I was like, where did they come from? Yeah, they're back.

SPEAKER_02 3:26

Why? But the most disturbing thing I think is back and is all over everyone's feeds at the moment is the super skinny trend. What is going on in Hollywood right now?

SPEAKER_01 3:38

It's very problematic, and it's just makes me really sad to see it, to think that the celebrities must feel under some sort of pressure from something or someone to go back to that really, really thin look.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

They've always had that pressure. I feel like I remember seeing an article about Anne Hathaway. In the Devil Wears Prada 1, they were telling her that she should lose more weight. Yeah. And it was Meryl Street that told her, no, don't do it.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

But even in the movie, she was not a big girl. She was skinny. And they were like, oh, you're a size six, that's too big.

unknown 4:16

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:18

And they were kind of parroting the fashion industry in that respect as well, right? The actual movie. But when they were filming for The Devil Wears Prada 2, her and Meryl actually went to Fashion Week when they had just commenced the filming process and they were talking casting and things like that. And they both noted the trend of the fashion industry going back to uber skinny models. And they actually made a point and had a conversation with production around not casting super skinny models in the Devil Worlds Prada 2. I'm sure that there's still very skinny women, but there's a difference between thin and uber thin, rail thin, which is the trend we're kind of starting to see at the moment with people glamorizing this almost hate to say it, but eating disorder, lifestyle, and aesthetic, where it's all shoulder bones, cheek bones, clavicles showing. It doesn't look healthy. It doesn't Well, it's not.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

That's the bottom line, right? It's it's signs of malnourishment, which is concerning. Um but I wonder if it's like if if Meryl and Anne have sort of said, look, look at me like I'm talking about them like they're my besties. Um just you know, just give them a call. But if they're saying that they're seeing it in the fashion industry, that's probably driving a fair bit of it when it comes to celebrities because they're having to fit into quote unquote sample sizes. And maybe it's a money thing behind the fashion industry in some way, shape, or form because the fabrics are expensive or things are costing more and they don't. I don't know. I'm sure look, I'm trying to try to bring some logic here.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

And you're giving them an out with better.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

I am, yeah, which is not yeah, which is not really cool. My logical, curious brain just kind of wants to know why, you know, try to figure out why it is.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

Yeah, I don't know where that came from. I guess they drape better on people that don't have boobs and hips. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And thighs. Exactly. So I mean, I always laughed at couture. Um, this is this is really telling the type of person I am here. I would never buy one thing I would ever see on a runway. I probably would, but I'd have nowhere to wear any of it.

unknown 6:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 6:47

But they're like the weirdest things you've ever seen. That's hot couture though. Like if you look at the ready-to-wear collection, it's still highly stylized, but then there's a version of that that is wearable. Some of the evening dresses are stunning and they're the things that I could see myself wearing. I just got nowhere to wear them, so props not. So, do we think that body positivity evaporated overnight?

SPEAKER_00 7:13

It feels like it did. I feel like all of the champions for body positivity decided that it wasn't serving them anymore. So, someone that I loved so much for embracing her curves was um Megan Trainer. She always talked about how she loved her curves, she sang songs about it. All about that bass. She sang songs about it, and then dunno, she just scrapped it. And I think she did come out and say that she has been taking um GLP1. And the other person that was the same as Lizzo, she was huge in the body positivity movement, and then that has gone away because you know she's wanting to be healthier and fitter. So I don't know, there's it's like there's not a place for the two to exist together. Do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 8:02

I do think the weight loss medication has played a part because I think while people who are were always positive about yes, I've got curves, you know, I'm a little bit heavier or whatever. Deep down I don't know if it was because they really felt that way or they felt they wanted to give that persona because deep down they probably would have liked to have lost the weight if they could, but I d I think it's a pretty under-researched area in why some people can lose weight easily and others can't. And I do wonder if, you know, these people who yes always said that they were happy with who they were, probably weren't really and would have liked to have lost a bit of weight. I think some have gone too far. But yeah, I wonder if that's having an impact somehow, but then it it doesn't make sense to me for the people who are already very thin to then be going further with it. That bit doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Like, is it a competition? Who can be the skinniest?

SPEAKER_02 9:06

There's two very different utilizations of GLP1 at the moment, right?

SPEAKER_03 9:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:11

There's people who have a legitimate cause to be using it for whatever reason, whether they've got underlying medical conditions or they've tried everything else and they're doing it sensibly, they're doing it to doctors' specifications and following a diet a strict diet and things like that to make sure they're getting all the right nutrients. There's people with legitimate need for it. And I do think that if you look at someone like a Lizzo, I don't begrudge her going on it and getting herself healthier because that is the whole reason that these medications exist in the first place, because there's a lot of health issues that come with carrying additional weight.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

I don't know if Lizzo has come out and said she takes GLP1. She was saying it was diet and exercise. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 9:55

Either way, she's taking the steps she needs to take to get healthier. So like I'm all for that. But I think, Robbs, to your point, this situation of people who are already extremely thin using it as a cheat code to lose a lot more weight is the biggest problem because they're not healthy and they don't look remotely healthy.

SPEAKER_01 10:21

And I mean, I guess no one's coming out and saying that they're doing that, but people are assuming that that's what's happening. Yeah, like there's a there's a wide assumption that that's what's going on, right?

SPEAKER_02 10:31

It doesn't even matter, Robs. Like I don't I don't care if they're using GLP ones or not. Neither do I. What I'm concerned with is the fact that the people who were were skinny and are now even skinnier, or the people who were a bit bigger and feel like maybe they've lost a little bit too much weight and have gone too far these days. My concern is the message they're sending to the next generation, actually every generation that currently exists, everybody, the whole world, on what is the kind of the beauty aesthetic, what is the the beauty standard, because you can't tell me that some of those people aren't getting to look the way they do without either abusing GLP ones, using them inappropriately, or using them when they have no need to be using them, or have eating disorders, or have obsessions with exercise, uh excessively exercising. They're not getting to that point by doing healthy habits. They're doing calorie restriction, over-exercising, and potentially, you know, misuse of medication as well.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

Yeah, and I guess this is where like, you know, you can kind of see the parallel with like the late 90s and 2000s, where these little celebrities back then, you know, like even like a Nicole Ritchie, I remember um Jessica Simpson, they were all being called fat. Yeah. And you look back at photos of them, they were not fat. They just weren't what these women are looking like again now, where they're so, so thin that they look ill. And I don't know I don't know why it's coming back around to that and why, you know, that's happening. I I just I don't understand her. And it's very concerning.

SPEAKER_02 12:18

Yeah, it's terrifying. So Jamila Jamil has been a very strong advocate when it comes to body positivity, and I actually really love her. She can speak to this issue really eloquently because she suffered from anorexia for quite an extended period of her life and has actually done damage to her body because of the fact that she suffered with this illness for so long. She was a big advocate during the body positivity movement because she knew the damage that, you know, growing up in the 90s did to women and the pressure it put on them to be thin at any cost, because she suffered the consequences of it firsthand. And she is really respectful in how she approaches this situation because she is also empathetic to what each individual is going through, right? And I think it's really interesting how we approach this because there's no easy answer, but I think it is to be soft on the individual and hard on the problem because to call out individuals, and I'm just I'm gonna name one because she has been someone who has been called out recently, Kelly Osborne, yeah. For looking unhealthy, and a lot of people in comments just dragged her over the coals and said she's looked so ill, what has she done to herself? She came out and said, you know, how dare you, rightly so, how dare you speak about me and my body. I am going through medical issues, I am grieving my father, you don't know my situation, so please don't comment on it. And I think that's such a fair rebuttal to the criticism she faced because we can't look at any one individual and go, they're letting down society, because we don't know the backstory of every individual, but we can see a collective pattern happening. And I think where it is helpful is to call out that pattern because these people that are uber skinny, they're as big a victim of the system as anybody. They're as big a victims of the patriarchy of being told, you know, women should be small, smaller, smaller, even smaller, lose a little bit more weight. They're actually the biggest victims because they've fallen prey to this logic.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

Yeah, I absolutely agree. You never know what someone's going through behind the scenes, you don't know what's happening in their life. It is hard not to judge someone when they're in the public eye like that and they rock up to a red carpet and they look scary, you know. Um and I think a lot of it does come from genuine concern from people a lot of the time. But I do think we need to step away from commenting all the time on an individual's body and talking about the wider problem that's going on rather than making certain individuals the poster for it.

SPEAKER_00 15:11

And like, don't forget, I know people that worked as um photoshoppers for magazine companies that used to like add pounds here, shave off pounds there. Where were they adding pounds ever? You know, it's probably in the chest. No, no, you know how sometimes they wanted to make a point of like so-and-so's time they've gained they've gained weight, they look really fat now. Like I'm talking about the the new ideas and the who's of the world and the people magazines, the trash bag magazines, right? I knew someone who was literally whose whole job was to Photoshop people to look skinnier or fatter. And I'm like, how do you live with yourself?

SPEAKER_02 15:46

Just based on what the narrative was.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

Yeah, exactly. How crazy is that? So sometimes it's not even the celebrity doing anything, it's the news outlets that are and there can be really bad lighting, really bad angles. Oh god, how many times have we had a photograph and I'm like, oh no, no guys.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

Oh, that's not good.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

Gotta retake that one. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:10

Angles are everything. I agree with Jamila on that we shouldn't be calling out the individual. She said that she's made that mistake in the past and now she feels bad about having taken that approach. But it's still a really tough one because if somebody posts a picture of a celebrity at a red carpet and they clearly look unwell, and then the all the comments under them are positive comments because we've gone, okay, we're not going to engage in that and we're not going to join the pylon against women, then other women are looking at that and seeing that all the comments are positive, and therefore that then reinforces that this is the ideal. So I'm kind of at a place of like, what do we do?

SPEAKER_01 16:54

I don't know what the answer is. I really don't, because we live in a society where everything is public and everybody has the ability to comment on it, right? Which they didn't used to have. And short of getting rid of that, I don't know how you stop the wrong message being given by not saying anything and then going, oh, she looks great, when clearly she doesn't.

SPEAKER_00 17:17

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

So I don't I don't know what the answer is to that. I really don't.

SPEAKER_02 17:21

Damn, I hoped you were gonna solve it for me, Robs. I don't have enough wisdom for that one. Um so Jamila basically says that let's not attack the individual, let's attack the system, which I definitely agree with that part. Let's go after the systems. But she does take issue with people that are building platforms that profit off of it. So, like we're talking skinny talk. What I ate in a day and what they ate in a day is like two-fifths of buckle and ice for dinner. Apparently, ice for dinner is a trend again. I was just like, sweet Jesus. And it's and it's really strange because for me, none of this appeals to me at all. Like, sure, I want to be as healthy as I can. I know I've got some work to do there. I want to increase my strength. I've got some back issues that I need to take care of. I want to keep being really flexible as I'm older, so I'm getting really into yoga. I still have health aspirations, and some of them involve, you know, losing a little bit of weight and toning up and getting stronger. Nothing wrong with that.

SPEAKER_00 18:23

It's interesting that you were talking about like, did you call it thin talk? Is that what you call it? Skinny talk. Skinny talk, skinny talk. You know, that's trash and it deserves to be in the bin. But also, I do think that things have changed a little bit like since the 90s. I hope so. Well, it was all about effortless skinny, right? Those women made everyone think being skinny was like so easy. It was like just I gotta drink a Diet Coke and I'll be fine. Like, no, it was fucking hard work. You can be eating like 12 almonds a day and not doing anything else. Whereas now I think that there's more of a disciplined skinny coming about, right? Where, you know, there's a lot of people out there, influencers, whether you love them or hate them, who are promoting like, you know, Pilates and clean eating and um doing it the right way. And like this is what happens when you are more disciplined with with what you eat, in a way that's kind of improved from where it was in the 90s. No?

SPEAKER_02 19:19

Has it though? Or are we just are we hiding behind wellness? Are we saying, like, oh, we're doing all the right things, but in the background we're also taking GLP ones when you know some of us don't need to, or we are significantly under eating, or we're going to Pilates 20 times a week.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

The person I do love in this space is Jessica Beale. Because she came out very clearly after the TV show that she did where she had that white backless dress and she looked ripped, right? Like she was so toned, her back looked amazing, her arms looked amazing, and she came out, she's like, I don't look like that every day. Yeah. I had to work my ass off for that. Like and eat chicken and broccoli and do all these exercises and but that's what I mean.

SPEAKER_00 20:03

Discipline, right? If you are disciplined and you do all the right things. So there are pockets of people like Jessica Beale who are like that. Whereas when you look back at like the cake.

SPEAKER_02 20:13

She said she went off the diet straight away. She was like, fuck off. I didn't living like that for the rest of my life. It's miserable.

SPEAKER_01 20:18

Let's be honest. She's a very fit, healthy person anyway.

SPEAKER_02 20:21

Yeah, but even she said that that was completely unsustainable. I did it for a brief moment to look this way. She was still disciplined. Yeah, but but you're advocating for discipline like it's like it's something to be proud of if you're just eating chicken and broccoli every day.

SPEAKER_00 20:41

I'm not saying that at all. All I'm saying is at least they're honest about how they're going about doing it. Because before, everybody was telling you a lot of people Kate Moss was fucking taking Coke all the time to get as skinny as she was, right? And I don't mean drinking coke, I mean snorting coke, to get as as skinny as she was.

SPEAKER_02 20:58

She liked diet coke quite a bit as well. I mean, she didn't coin the phrase. She said she's been massively misquoted on this. But the slogan that became associated with her for such a long time was nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. Skinny feels. She said she read that off a friend's fridge and just thought it would be funny to say in an interview and then it became her catchphrase. But she did subscribe to a lot of that. She survived on cigarettes and diet coke. She said she didn't eat because she was too busy at shoots all day and nobody fed her, therefore she didn't actually eat that much. Uh yeah, exactly. But yeah. I see where you're going with it because they're not promoting, hey everyone, smoke cigarettes and have a diet coke. But there's still a lot of toxicity in how that message is being communicated.

SPEAKER_00 21:51

I'm not saying it's perfect by any means. I think it's better than it was because there is more education out there for people. And it's how people are taking. That education and what they are doing with it.

SPEAKER_02 22:02

There's more education, but that's part of the problem. Why are we in the situation we're in now where we're seeing these rail thin celebrities walking on red carpets as supposedly like the epitome of what we should all be aspiring to when we have all the knowledge around what malnutrition does to bone density? We know that anorexia is one of the top killers in terms of mental illness. Why? With all this information, are we still going down the same path?

SPEAKER_01 22:32

I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 22:34

I don't know and I don't like it. You could kind of argue that in the 90s, like we didn't maybe we didn't know any better. We know better now.

SPEAKER_00 22:42

We're doing it again. I think that's just that just comes down to everything that we get served. We get served something and then made are made to believe that that's the way everybody should look, that's the way everyone should be. And the sad thing is it was the Megan trainers and the Lizzos of the world that made you feel like it was okay to not be perfect, and now they're kind of going back in the opposite direction, right? They're going against what they were saying.

SPEAKER_02 23:05

We can't blame them though, right?

SPEAKER_00 23:06

Because not blaming them, not blaming them, but that's gone. That whole like be yourself, you don't have to be rail skinny, that that doesn't exist anymore. I don't know if it's gone, there's less of it, I'd say.

SPEAKER_02 23:20

A lot less. And it's not the stuff that you're getting fed on your algorithm.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

No, and there were like so many, like it's so funny. Like Oprah was someone who was like, you know, for the longest time, she tried every diet under the sun, let's be honest. Um she was the Weight Watchers. Was it Weight Watchers?

unknown 23:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:38

She's come out and said that she kind of regrets her place in the diet culture, though, and that it probably wasn't the best for her to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_02 23:46

Again, that was probably education of the time, wasn't it? Yeah. And I mean, Weight Watchers was probably a healthier option than some of the tactics that people are taking now. Yeah. She literally came out and said she was on Ozempic, and Weight Watchers went out of business.

SPEAKER_00 24:04

She killed it. She was on the board for years, like we're talking decades, and then she resigned from the board, told everybody about Ozempic, and then bye-bye.

SPEAKER_02 24:15

I mean, there's nothing wrong with that because Ozempic is solving a problem that people have. It's just how it's being utilized across people that don't necessarily need to be taking it.

SPEAKER_01 24:26

Yeah. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 24:27

It's interesting because the look to me that's all over the red carpet at the moment, I have no interest in that. To me, it doesn't feel aspirational. I always think it looks quite alien in a way, in the you know, the very gaunt faces, eyes popping out of the head, very skeletal frame. Like to me, there is nothing about that that I aspire to. I can see that there's an appeal there, but to me, that beauty almost looks alien. It doesn't look human to me. And so as a 44-year-old woman woman, I'm sitting here going, Oh, I don't really want any part of that. Yeah, I want to get healthier, fitter, stronger, maybe lose a little bit of weight. But my primary goal is to be strong and tone up and be flexible. But then I wondered, am I feeling that way now because I'm 44? Because I lived through the 90s, made all those mistakes, and now I'm coming to at it, you know, from a different place of having more self-esteem, more confidence in who I am and my body. Because when I think about how I behaved in the 90s, I was quite a thin person. I was tall, thin. When I hit puberty, I got some curves, especially in the hip and thigh area. And I remember doing everything I could to shrink my thighs. And that was just the shape of my body and as skinny as I got. And at the time I had a, you know, when I was 19 years old, washboard stomach, but still quite curvy thighs. And I remember how hard I was on myself, hated going to the beach, being in a swimsuit. I'd wear skirts to disguise their area. I exercised quite a bit. I would run and it got excessive at times, I'm not gonna lie. And I definitely restricted calories. And if I look back on those pictures now, I was thin by anybody's standard. So I got damaged by the 90s. I can a hundred percent hand on heart say that the nineties fucked with my head a bit. And because 2026 isn't fucking with my head, is it just an age thing? Is it perspective and wisdom? And having, you know, learned from my mistakes.

SPEAKER_01 26:43

Yeah, I think it is. It's life experience. I hope that there is more information out there that the younger generation isn't impacted as badly as we were. Again, we didn't have social media, or we didn't, you know, everything we were served was was these toxic magazines and this toxic media that was showing us. And to Rums's point, being photoshopped when they didn't have to disclose they were photoshopping it, they weren't telling you that they were changing these photos. Whereas now that you know it's like a disclosure thing. Is it? Because don't people still use filters and everything?

SPEAKER_00 27:18

Don't they have to like say on the in the magazines, you mean? Yeah. I don't actually know. Well, who buys magazines anymore?

unknown 27:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:27

Sorry.

SPEAKER_02 27:29

Sorry, new idea.

SPEAKER_00 27:30

Oh, yeah, yeah. But wasn't there that very famous I can't remember who it was, but someone was on the cover of a magazine and found out that they had photoshopped her and she said, No, I want the original. I can't remember who that was. That was that was a couple of years ago. That wasn't that long ago.

SPEAKER_01 27:45

I I hope maybe there's better education for the younger generation than what we had in this space, so they they may have a little bit more insight or understanding that this is a trend. We don't necessarily have to follow this. But I do think with us it's we've been through it. We've seen this play out before, and we won't, you know, we won't let it affect us again in the same way.

SPEAKER_00 28:11

Dende in 2015 publicly called out a magazine for manipulating her 19-year-old hips and torso posting a side-by-side comparison of the original to her Instagram handle.

SPEAKER_02 28:23

Somebody who is incredibly naturally skinny. Really?

SPEAKER_00 28:27

Yeah. I know. Um Kerry Washington said she was taken aback by her AdWeek cover, stating it was so different from what I look like when I look in the mirror. And Kate Winslet complained in GQ magazine in 2003, that's a long time ago. She complained that her legs were reduced by about a third in the magazine's editing process. That's the one I remember.

SPEAKER_02 28:51

And she's very vocal on body positivity and also the backlash against aging, naturally.

SPEAKER_00 28:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:58

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I re-watched Titanic recently, and I was like, oh my god, she's so thin and stunning. She's tiny. And everyone called her fat when that came out. Remember the flax she copped?

SPEAKER_01 29:12

Like, whoa. This is the thing. When I look back at these actresses and I go, they were all tiny, but we, even in my head, was convinced that they were fat because that's what we were told. That's what they were not.

SPEAKER_00 29:26

I want to hope that maybe it's the um glass half full in me. I want to hope that with more information the next generation has access to, they're not gonna be as, I don't know, ruined as we were, as you were, Scotty. I want to believe that they just mean have more of an idea. You guys are fine. I was never skinny in my whole life.

SPEAKER_02 29:48

But did you feel the pressure?

SPEAKER_00 29:51

I mean, I've never we we talked about this. I've I don't think I've ever eaten the right amount of calories in my entire life, Michelle. Never, not once. I think I've I've been under-eating for the longest time and it wasn't until I've got a lot of money. Telling me you're not a victim of the 90s? I mean, I think I was, but I I think I probably gave up because for me, I was like, I'm never gonna be skinny. I'm never, ever, ever gonna be skinny. No matter what I do, no matter how hard I try. I'm and it's funny now when I look at myself, I do weigh more than I did when I was younger. But I have like most of us don't. I think that's normal. But it but I have muscle that I didn't have back then. I didn't care about being strong. I cared so much about like, you know, being skinny, because that's what I was told to believe. That um being healthy, being fit was never part of it, which is what it is a big part of my life now, right? So all of that makes me think, and I and I always say this to you guys, I say it to you so much. I wish I had the knowledge about health and fitness that I have now when I was 20. I wish I I could go back in time and tell that younger me, hey, do these things, don't focus on that. That's a shit thing for you to do. Don't eat these foods, up yourself. Yeah. More protein, up your protein. I wish I could. So I I I want to be hopeful that the younger generation have access to more of that information that we never did, because everything that we consumed was, you know, quite narrow and it was very curated. We had to look up Encyclopedia Britannica for fuck's sake. And you only had the ones your parents could afford.

SPEAKER_02 31:24

So I'm just on A's this week. That's all I got. Oh, yeah. Look, I I mean, there's definitely more education out there. I just question whether it's landing when we find ourselves in the situation that we that we're in at the moment, right? And I don't think it's anything new because if you look at tumultuous times through history, there seems to be a trend of swinging back to women shrinking. So if you look at the 60s, the 90s, and now all great times of political unrest, fear, uncertainty, war, women's rights being pushed forward. It's the whole one step forward, two steps back, like hang on a second. Things are equalizing. How do we get them back in the box? Let's tell them that the new ascetic is skinny again, and that way they starve themselves and they're too weak to fight the patriarchy.

SPEAKER_00 32:32

You are scaring me with that train of thought. That's some Go get your tinfoil hat. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:41

Put your tinfoil hat on. Oh, really? Okay. That's interesting. You think that's going too far?

SPEAKER_00 32:49

I mean, I who? Who is the who who which man came up with that? They can't work together to come up with the thought process of like, let's make them skinny again and make them weak so they can't fight the patriarchs.

SPEAKER_02 33:01

It's all about pushing women down, right? Taking a bay away choices, rights, increasing the beauty standard so it feels unattainable. Let's focus them on other things so they can't focus on joining together and fighting the patriarchy.

SPEAKER_00 33:15

Do you think that they're that smart, or is it more on along the lines of make them skinny because it looks more appealing and it's what I want? Is it appealing though? What's going on now? I don't know. I'm not a man, I don't know. I'm just saying. Maybe they're into that.

SPEAKER_02 33:32

I don't know. I do think there are some patterns that have happened throughout time that when women start gaining ground, we find creative ways to put them back in their box. And also we're in a time of real uncertainty at the moment, right? With war, um, AI, all these things that make people fearful of the future. And times like that, it is when you start to return to traditional values. And you know, we're seeing it with like trad wife movements and stay-at-home girlfriend content and fashion and everything. I don't know. I just feel like everything's pushing us to be smaller and more submissive at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 34:11

Yeah, I would agree with that.

SPEAKER_01 34:13

Yeah, and I do also feel if we just sort of focus on Hollywood, because this is where this emanates from, right? It's like it's from the entertainment industry. There uh, I would say, and just from observing, quite a lot of quite powerful women in the industry at the moment who have created their own production companies and have started making a lot more movies tailored towards women, like you know, Uri Swither Spoons, you know, Margot Robbie and Nicole Kippen. And there does seem that there has been over the past five to ten years a bit of a power shift in Hollywood. So maybe that's part of it. Like to your point, Scotty, like maybe maybe it's not a wider let's make all the women skinny again and make them think that that's what it has to be, but maybe it's a shift in that bubble, which just happens to impact everybody else because it's so visible. I don't know, like maybe that is happening, although I can't imagine Reese with a spoon cowering down to that at all.

SPEAKER_02 35:14

But no, but then two of the three pip actresses you named in there are incredibly skinny, so yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:21

Yeah, that is true.

SPEAKER_00 35:23

I think the Me Too movement also was something that helped Hollywood because obviously, like, all this shit was happening. More women wanted to work with women, more women were supporting women. So that was a good thing that happened. The movement was good. Yeah, no, not what happened.

SPEAKER_02 35:42

Yeah, maybe. Not maybe. It definitely was a good thing. It was a long time bloody coming, that's for sure. In addition, what's come back is all the 90s fashion. They could keep that. Low rises, jeans, slip dresses. I do love a slip dress. I have always wanted to wear a slip dress. Doesn't work for me. Too many curves. Handkerchief tops, pencil skirts, all incredibly unfriendly to people with curves.

SPEAKER_00 36:13

Yeah, I never liked anything from the nineties. I hated fashion in the nineties. So you won't be revisiting any of those trends? No.

SPEAKER_02 36:21

Okay. I don't know if you guys have seen this, but it's gone one step further in 2026. It's not just low rise jeans, it's low rise unbuttoned jeans. Have you seen this? No. This sounds dangerous and fraught with disaster. Kylie Jenner at Coachella. Tyler is a big fan of it as well. Just unbuttoned jeans folded down all the way to pretty close to where? Yoni Town.

SPEAKER_00 36:57

So they're not low rise jeans. They're like mid-rise jeans folded down to low rise jeans.

SPEAKER_02 37:02

I don't know. They're just very low. They're as low as you can go. Like they're clearly not worried about flashing their panty hamsters. Probably because they're bald as badges down there, but I would assume so.

SPEAKER_00 37:15

Badgers are not bald, by the way. Are they? Where did that expression come from?

SPEAKER_02 37:21

Moles? Are moles bald? No, they're hairy. Alright, well, what can we say then? Bald as a a bald eagle? An eagle. Bald as an eagle. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 37:34

Well, no, I hadn't seen that. I had not seen that. And I am not okay with it. They can go on the bin.

SPEAKER_00 37:43

Yeah. I never liked low rise jeans. They didn't work for me. They didn't work for anyone.

SPEAKER_01 37:48

Even if you are stick thin, they still don't look good on you.

SPEAKER_02 37:52

I would lay down on the bed to get my jeans on because they were skinny as well, right? They were skinny and low rise.

SPEAKER_01 37:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:57

And I would pull them on and you'd still have a little bit of a muffin top, especially when you sat down, because that's just that's just how.

SPEAKER_00 38:06

They weren't comfy at all. But like you just gave us you gave us high-rise jeans and the world rejoiced. Why are you taking it away from us? You didn't rejoice. You don't like them. Yeah, but mid midrise works for me. Mid-rise, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:18

High rise are under your boobs.

SPEAKER_00 38:20

Yeah, it's just because I got a short torso, okay? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:24

Alright. A short torso. And then pop culture almost feels like it's being a bit recycled as well. So Baywatch is back and currently being filmed. And Robin, was it you who sent around the picture of the new swimsuit or was that you, Tess? That was me. That was Tess. Jeez.

SPEAKER_00 38:42

That is tiny.

SPEAKER_01 38:45

There's not a lot of room for movement. How are you saving somebody in that? You are not going into the surf in that and not having a severe malfunction.

SPEAKER_02 38:55

Exactly. Like, forget about a nip slip. You're like more likely to have a clit slip than that one.

unknown 39:00

Can I say that?

SPEAKER_02 39:02

Yes, you can. I'll beep myself out later.

SPEAKER_00 39:06

No, you can. You can.

SPEAKER_02 39:07

I actually went back and pulled up a photo of Pammy back in the day because I was like, I know the suits were skimpy, they were very high cut on the sides, but I was sure there was more coverage in the yoni area. And and there was like there was a lot more coverage. I don't know who and this is the trend I'm seeing in all swimsuits. Like, who are they designed for?

SPEAKER_01 39:31

I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 39:32

You know, sometimes you wonder some of those swimsuits, they're designed for people to look, I guess. Like you want people to look. Yeah. Yeah. You know? And that's cool if that's your gem. It's not my gem. I want everyone to look away. If I could find a swimsuit that would make everyone look away, that'd be great.

SPEAKER_02 39:49

People are gonna be looking though. Like if you go in the surf, you're gonna come out and people are gonna be looking. Not at your swimsuit, at what's hanging out of it. This is unrealistic for a lifesaver to be wearing this. People's lives are at stake. She doesn't want to have to worry about what's going on down there.

SPEAKER_00 40:08

I don't even know if you could run comfortably in that thing.

SPEAKER_02 40:11

No. Nope. Well, we'll find out. I think it's coming out later in 2026. So we'll keep our eyes peeled for the slow motions. Be a lot of outtakes. Yeah. There has to be some double-sided tape involved, doesn't there?

SPEAKER_00 40:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:26

But then if she goes in the water, does that does that hold? I don't know. Someone needs to interview her and ask her. Yep. Be like, how does your bather stay in position? Asking the important questions, and then she'll be like, that's really offensive to ask. Would you ask a man the same thing? No, but the man's not wearing his balls aren't hanging out the side of his fucking budgie smile. Exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 40:48

Any final thoughts, ladies? I just really don't I don't want low-rise jeans to be a thing. If we could all band together and stop that from becoming a trend, I'd be very happy. Please. Yeah, let's burn them. Burn them all. I'm with you, Robin.

SPEAKER_02 41:05

I liked my low rise jeans back in the 90s. Do you like them now, Michelle? No, fuck no.

SPEAKER_00 41:12

But I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 41:13

Why would you subject them?

SPEAKER_01 41:14

Why would you subject them to the biggest thing?

SPEAKER_02 41:15

I'm not gonna wear them, but I'm like. If you guys want to wear them, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 41:19

So did you love seeing everyone's muffin tops and butt cracks when they leaned over?

SPEAKER_02 41:24

I don't enjoy the butt crack. Remember when people used to bend over and used to see the G string coming out of the top of there? Apparently that's back too. I could do without that. I could do without that too. Yeah. Yep. That's my final thought. Thank you. It's a great final thought. So maybe the real question isn't whether 2026 is a reboot of 1999. It's why are we suddenly craving that era again? The more chaotic the world feels, the more culture seems to swing towards nostalgia, but nostalgia has a very selective memory. The problem with the 90s was never about polarized genes. The problem was a culture that turned women into aspirational products, pick them apart in public, and convince an entire generation that smaller meant better. So sure, wear the jeans and enjoy the reboot. Just maybe don't forget the lessons we learnt the first time around. That's all we have time for today. If you'd like to get in touch with us, we'd love to hear from you. DM us on our socials or email us at Bytribe. That's B Y E Tribe at gmail.com. And don't forget to follow the show. Until next time, keep channeling that big yoni energy.