‘90s Heroin Chic Is Back … For Boys | The American Spectator

While many of us have been distracted by the controversy over the American Eagle ad with Sydney Sweeney and her “good jeans,” we have paid little attention to the ways in which fashion trends are affecting teenage boys and young men. Rejecting the buff bodies and the building of muscle definition of the past, teenage boys and young men have become increasingly attracted to the idea of starving themselves to achieve the perfect emaciated look. Thinness is everything to them, and some of them are obsessively measuring their food intake in order to look like waifish celebrities like Timothee Chalamet. Today’s boys are challenging the gender norm more than ever before. (RELATED: Sydney Sweeney Ad Means America Is Hot Again)

Dieting is no longer the domain of girls, and Ulta Beauty and Sephora now cater to a growing number of young men and boys interested in hair and skin products.

Like all fashion trends, social media — especially Tik Tok — has encouraged the trend with thousands of posts on “looksmaxing” which is the practice of intentionally improving one’s physical appearance through various means — ranging from changes in grooming, skincare, and fashion to more significant actions such as dieting, exercise, cosmetic procedures, or even surgery. Originally popularized in online communities, the term is often used to describe the pursuit of maximizing perceived attractiveness, usually in response to evolving societal standards of beauty and the pressure to conform to idealized images seen in media and on social platforms.

For many individuals, especially teenage boys and young male adults, looksmaxing can involve adopting elaborate routines to enhance features, reduce flaws, or fit a particular style or aesthetic. While in some ways this can be seen as a form of self-improvement and confidence building, there are concerns about the potential for unhealthy comparisons and the same kinds of body image issues that we once worried about with teenage girls and young women. To meet the growing demand from young men, online apps like Calorie Counter by FatSecret have emerged that allow dieters to take pictures of the food on their plate to determine how many calories they may be consuming.

Not surprisingly, we are beginning to see the same kinds of eating disorders in young males that we have historically seen in young women. Boys and men now make up about one-third of those diagnosed with an eating disorder. Several celebrities, including Ed Sheeran and Elton John, have shared their struggles with anorexia and bulimia.

Gay men in the past were much more likely than heterosexual men to develop eating disorders because of the beauty standards and cultural demands for youthful body ideals within some gay communities. A decade ago, studies showed that 42 percent of men with eating disorders are gay, with gay men being up to 12 times more likely to report binge eating than heterosexual men. These statistics have likely changed as the culture has so dramatically changed.

Eating disorders are on the rise among young males.

Today, fashion advertising and social media — especially TikTok — promote the ideal male body as one of extreme thinness. As a result, an alarming number of young men are chasing the same kind of unrealistic ideal that women have chased for decades. Many teenage boys want to be thin due to a combination of societal pressures, media portrayals, and personal insecurities. Popular culture frequently highlights lean, athletic male bodies as the ideal, shaping perceptions of attractiveness and success. Social media reinforces these standards, exposing teens to curated images that equate thinness with desirability and popularity.

Additionally, peer dynamics can amplify concerns about weight, as young people often compare themselves to others. For some, being thin represents discipline, control, and self-worth, motivating them to pursue this ideal even at the expense of their well-being. In this environment, the desire to be thin becomes not just about appearance, but also about fitting in and gaining acceptance during a formative stage of identity development.

In some ways, this is not a new phenomenon — body types and fashion are cyclical and change geographically. The Guardian reported on extreme male thinness in the U.K. 15 years ago in an article entitled “Thin is In: In Search of the Perfect Male Body.” This article was published long before social media had the strong appeal to thinness that we are seeing today. Blaming the commercialization of the male body, The Guardian suggested that:

Half of the moodily lit, erotic images used to sell us things now feature semi-naked men where they once only featured semi-naked women … The nameless pretty boys in hairdos and homoerotic poses routinely employed to flog anything from pants to rollerball gizmos designed to diminish unsightly undereye shadows to sunglasses. In those images these men — every last one of them, even the celebs, recline, supine. They are submissive, they gaze up at the cameras from beneath their eyelashes. They are beautiful, commercial coquettes and they dictate the way we perceive the male form.

In 2007 — long before the influence of social media — the cult of male thinness emerged in Japan and took hold to the extent that the New York Times headlined an article suggesting that “In Japan, It’s the Men Who Want to Be Skinny and Cute.” Reporting that “it’s the men who want to be slender, vulnerable and protected,” as young males between the ages of 18 and 30 make up the slimmest segment of the population, and the ideal fashion weight as decreed by the apparel industry. That ideal weight is about 125 pounds for a man who is 5 feet 8 inches. Twenty-five-year-old Junichi Shirakawa told a reporter for The Times that his girlfriend

likes the fact that she weighs more than he does and is the leader of the couple … She’s a lot stronger than I am, can lift heavy things and go drinking until dawn. I admire that about her, and feel protected when I’m around her, he said. Older than he by five years, it was Shirakawa’s girlfriend who made the approach, started the dating process and decided what course their relationship would take.

The Times article reported that Shirakawa likes to wear his girlfriend’s clothes and often shows up for work wearing her blouse and jeans, to the general approval of his co-workers. It should be noted that Japan — the world’s fourth largest economy — has experienced the largest population drop in history as the total population fell by more than 908,000 in 2024, the largest annual decline since records began in 1968, bringing the total to about 120.65 million. Today, Japan has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, falling to 1.15 children per woman in 2024, which is well below the replacement level of 2.1 needed to maintain a stable population. (RELATED: The Masculinization of the Modern Woman)

Sociologists recognize that cultural trends like these tend to follow cyclical patterns. We’ve seen similar shifts in the past, and eventually, another correction will come. But for now, teenage boys and young men are navigating a difficult landscape — one where the standards of male physical attractiveness are being dramatically reshaped, and many are simply trying to find their place within it.

READ MORE from Anne Hendershott:

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