Over the past decade, public discourse has revolved around inclusion, body acceptance, and the moral duty to “be kind.” Yet visual culture tells another story.
On global runways, plus-size models have nearly disappeared — less than 1 % of all looks in Spring/Summer 2025, according to Vogue Business. TikTok trends like #OzempicBody and #90sSkinnyComeback glorify extreme weight loss. Celine, Acne Studios and Diesel promote fragile silhouettes, pale faces, and the language of fatigue.
The paradox is clear: society speaks of freedom and diversity — but rewards control and restraint. Ethical rhetoric and aesthetic reality no longer align.
Our goal was to understand why this reversal is happening — what cultural and moral forces drive the comeback of thinness, and how the aesthetics of fragility became the new language of virtue.
In the early 1990s, heroin chic defined an aesthetic of extreme thinness and deliberate decay. Three decades later, it has returned — not as rebellion, but as stylised fatigue.
What was once scandalous is now marketed as honesty. Visible bones, vacant gazes, smudged makeup: the visual vocabulary of collapse becomes aspirational. The body turns into a surface for collective anxiety — exhaustion made desirable.
Ethically, this revival commodifies vulnerability. Images once linked to addiction and illness are rebranded as authenticity, turning suffering into aesthetic capital.
In 2023–2025, Vogue, The Cut (“The Ozempic Era”) and New York Post (“Heroin Chic Is Back”) all fix this shift in tone — from empathy to consumption.
Case 2. The “Ozempic Body” and the Medicalisation
of Thinness
Weight-loss injections like Ozempic and Wegovy have transformed the ideal body into a biotechnological project. Influencers frame medical procedures as wellness shortcuts — “a new self, one shot away.”
The ethics of self-care morph into the ethics of control. Health becomes performance, and pharmacology replaces discipline. Behind this lies the logic of privilege: access to medicalised thinness becomes a new class marker.
From an ethical standpoint, this trend blurs the line between healthcare and beauty marketing. When a drug with serious side effects is presented as lifestyle content, informed consent collapses.
The “Ozempic body” embodies the illusion of empowerment — a high-tech continuation of thinness culture disguised as progress.
Runways set visual norms; their silence defines what counts as beauty. The near-invisibility of larger bodies signals a return to exclusion — not through explicit policy,
but through absence.
This retreat reveals the fragility of inclusivity: when moral ideals stop selling, they vanish.
Representation, it turns out, was conditional.
Case 4. Inclusivity as Marketing Simulation
Many brands now use inclusive imagery as moral branding. Diversity becomes a strategy — a tool for “brand warmth,” not structural change.
Such simulation raises ethical questions: is inclusion still inclusion when it’s designed for profit? Are audiences misled into believing that visibility equals justice?
Empathy becomes performance. When compassion is monetised, social progress freezes at the level of campaign aesthetics.
Case 5. Digitalisation of the Body: Virtual Models and Synthetic Identity
The rise of virtual influencers like Shudu or Lil Miquela marks the next frontier — bodies without flesh, diversity without people.
These digital avatars are marketed as ethical, sustainable, endlessly adaptable. But they also erase the need for human imperfection. Bias shifts from culture to code: diversity is now programmable.
Ethically, this is the dissolution of accountability. If the “perfect body” is generated, who bears responsibility for the standard it sets? The digital body no longer represents reality — it manufactures it.
Case 6. Fashion as a Mirror of Burnout
The mood of recent seasons is exhaustion. Campaigns by Miu Miu, Acne, and Diesel glorify undone hair, smudged faces, and emotional vacancy.
This “aesthetic of fatigue” looks like rebellion against hustle culture — yet it also sells the very burnout it depicts. Fatigue becomes style. Tiredness becomes proof of effort — the new sign of belonging to a world that never stops.
Ethically, it’s a dangerous loop: fashion mirrors collective anxiety while feeding on it.
The Aesthetics of Decline: Three Waves of Cultural Crisis
Fin de siècle (late 19th century): Faith in progress collapsed, religion waned, and thinkers like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche questioned traditional virtue. Baudelaire wrote, “Beauty is always a little sad.” Artists such as Beardsley, Munch, and Schiele depicted elongated, frail bodies — symbols of a civilisation in decline. Suffering became authenticity.
The 1990s: Post-Cold-War disillusionment, the AIDS crisis, and consumer fatigue gave rise to a new realism. As Susan Bordo observed, thinness became a sign of moral control; Naomi Wolf called beauty standards instruments of power. “Heroin chic” made fragility glamorous, until the overdose of Davide Sorrenti in 1997 forced an ethical reckoning.
The 2020s: Pandemic, polarisation, and information overload have produced a third wave — a world of permanent tension. Le Monde calls it “the post-politically-correct era.” As Vogue Business notes, the return of early-2000s thinness is “not nostalgia but an economic symptom.” In uncertain times, fragility feels more honest than abundance.
Yet the ethics have shifted. As Byung-Chul Han writes in The Burnout Society: “We are compelled to be productive. Even the body must work.” Health becomes a moral duty (Robert Crawford’s healthism), and the body — a project of optimisation (Richard Shusterman’s somaesthetics). Thinness now signals virtue: to be smaller is to be better. What was once protest has become obedience.
Commodification of Suffering — pain and fragility repackaged as aesthetic capital.
Medicalisation of Morality — health reframed as obligation, not right.
Simulation of Inclusion — representation without redistribution.
Algorithmic Exclusion — bias encoded into visibility itself.
Aestheticisation of Burnout — exhaustion turned into proof of value.
Each reflects the same ethical drift: visual culture no longer liberates — it disciplines.
According to Margarita Feshchenko, the return of thinness and the “heroin chic” aesthetic should not be read as a complete rollback to the 1990s. She highlights that the context and mechanisms of influence have changed:
“In the 1990s, trends were dictated from glossy pages and runways. Today, everyone can express their opinion — instantly and publicly. Even under videos of dramatically slimmed Hollywood stars, one of the top comments is always: ‘Love yourself, don’t go back to painful standards.’ That openness simply didn’t exist thirty years ago.”
Feshchenko notes that the effects of the new ethics are still visible: the social norm of body shaming is slowly eroding, and public conversation about diversity remains present, even if less performative.
“The pendulum may have swung back, but the pattern of awareness has changed. The very fact that alternative opinions appear in media — even quietly — shows that the system is not the same. Between a trend and a stigma there’s now something new: quiet acceptance.”
She also underlines that cultural change is gradual and non-linear:
“We can’t rewrite beauty conventions in a year or a decade. But it’s already a lot that, on Russian television, makeover-show hosts no longer mock women’s bodies the way they did fifteen years ago. That’s progress — small, but meaningful.”
According to Margarita Feshchenko, the return of thinness and the “heroin chic” aesthetic should not be read as a complete rollback to the 1990s. She highlights that the context and mechanisms of influence have changed:
“In the 1990s, trends were dictated from glossy pages and runways. Today, everyone can express their opinion — instantly and publicly. Even under videos of dramatically slimmed Hollywood stars, one of the top comments is always: ‘Love yourself, don’t go back to painful standards.’ That openness simply didn’t exist thirty years ago.”
Feshchenko notes that the effects of the new ethics are still visible: the social norm of body shaming is slowly eroding, and public conversation about diversity remains present, even if less performative.
“The pendulum may have swung back, but the pattern of awareness has changed. The very fact that alternative opinions appear in media — even quietly — shows that the system is not the same. Between a trend and a stigma there’s now something new: quiet acceptance.”
She also underlines that cultural change is gradual and non-linear:
“We can’t rewrite beauty conventions in a year or a decade. But it’s already a lot that, on Russian television, makeover-show hosts no longer mock women’s bodies the way they did fifteen years ago. That’s progress — small, but meaningful.”
Expert Commentary —
Margarita Feshchenko
If in the 1990s fragility meant honesty, today it means compliance. The body no longer resists — it adapts, optimises, and performs wellness as duty.
As Margarita Feshchenko notes, cultural change is slow but ongoing. Even as thinness returns, public discourse has become more self-aware — the conversation about body diversity continues, though less performatively. Fragility today coexists with reflection; the pendulum swings, but consciousness remains.
To restore integrity, fashion and media must rebuild ethical communication on five principles:
Transparency — disclose digital alteration and medical intervention.
No glorification of suffering — aestheticise empathy, not harm.
Authentic inclusivity — embed diversity beyond campaigns.
Contextual responsibility — show risks, not only results.
Respect for embodiment — treat bodies as lived realities, not symbols.
Only through this awareness can the industry move beyond the paradox of the “new ethics” and return to its original role: to reflect humanity, not perfection.
Every era has its own form of fragility. What we witness today — the return of thinness, the aesthetic of burnout, the fading of inclusivity — is not the end of progress, but another swing of a long cultural pendulum.
Moments of crisis always provoke ethical introspection. After each wave of exhaustion, new meanings of strength and beauty emerge — less performative, more humane. The same culture that once glorified suffering later learns to translate it into care and awareness.
In this sense, the modern ethical perspective is not about fixed moral rules, but about balance — a constant negotiation between vulnerability and responsibility, body and culture, control and compassion. Fragility, then, is not our weakness, but our way of adaptation — a sign that society is once again searching for meaning, and that the body remains its most honest reflection.
If in the 1990s fragility meant honesty, today it means compliance. The body no longer resists — it adapts, optimises, and performs wellness as duty.
As Margarita Feshchenko notes, cultural change is slow but ongoing. Even as thinness returns, public discourse has become more self-aware — the conversation about body diversity continues, though less performatively. Fragility today coexists with reflection; the pendulum swings, but consciousness remains.
To restore integrity, fashion and media must rebuild ethical communication on five principles:
Transparency — disclose digital alteration and medical intervention.
No glorification of suffering — aestheticise empathy, not harm.
Authentic inclusivity — embed diversity beyond campaigns.
Contextual responsibility — show risks, not only results.
Respect for embodiment — treat bodies as lived realities, not symbols.
Only through this awareness can the industry move beyond the paradox of the “new ethics” and return to its original role: to reflect humanity, not perfection.
Every era has its own form of fragility. What we witness today — the return of thinness, the aesthetic of burnout, the fading of inclusivity — is not the end of progress, but another swing of a long cultural pendulum.
Moments of crisis always provoke ethical introspection. After each wave of exhaustion, new meanings of strength and beauty emerge — less performative, more humane. The same culture that once glorified suffering later learns to translate it into care and awareness.
In this sense, the modern ethical perspective is not about fixed moral rules, but about balance — a constant negotiation between vulnerability and responsibility, body and culture, control and compassion. Fragility, then, is not our weakness, but our way of adaptation — a sign that society is once again searching for meaning, and that the body remains its most honest reflection.
