CHOOSE DEATH

If you can’t be a clean girl, be a sick girl.

Smoking, skinniness, and sleepless nights? It’s a fine line between seductive and sickly. Yet, for those who truly grapple with these issues, there is no glamour. The struggles that are shamed in real life become alluring spectacles on glossy pages. Picture this: you’re bony, pale, and yellow—not pretty, sweet, and blushed. The bags under your eyes are bigger than the one on your shoulder. You are entirely unfeminine, but you are still fashion. You are heroin chic, the It Girl, a living Tim Burton character. So, become what they say you are. Give in to rebellion, to smoking, to partying, chaos, and sleepless nights. Sickness is in, and it's the most accessible trend to jump on yet.

Well, we're flipping the script. “Choose Death,” must be our rhetoric mantra now. Instead of glamorising the bleak allure of drug-loaded visual demure, we're pulling back the veil on the twisted beauty standards that make self-destruction look so damn appealing. Welcome to a world where fashion doesn't just dress you up—it dresses you down, into a caricature of yourself. In the relentless pursuit of an idealised form, we sacrifice our mental health, our identities, and our very essence. The controversy surrounding heroin chic isn't just about skinny models; it's about a cultural obsession with unattainable perfection that leaves countless individuals battling body image and mental health issues. So why do we weaponise it? Slicing through the fabric of self-worth and perpetuating a cycle of dissatisfaction and despair.

I had the opportunity to speak with a model who has chosen to remain entirely anonymous. For the purposes of this feature, I’ll be referring to her as Sienna.

Sienna, who has long struggled with these very issues, speaks candidly about the toxic environment surrounding beauty in the fashion world. The young model confesses, “Seeing people glamorising drugs in editorials…you may think, this is really cool, but I’ve never done it to be cool. I’ve done it when I feel the worst I’ve ever felt.” She highlights the danger of normalising harmful behaviours, stating, “It’s a sickness but people don’t see it.” In her industry, where drug use is standardised, she’s experienced moments where substances were offered to her at fashion shows. This tastes like some bitter nostalgia…

OK rewind – The 90s was a decade of dead muses, of kissing girls with pale lilac lips, and corpse-clean-white eyes. Where grunge ruled, heroin chic became the epitome of “edgy” beauty. Kate Moss, Jamie King, and Angelina Jolie; these half-alive idols rose to fame like Dracula from his coffin, only in baby tees, micro-mini skirts, and sheer dresses. They embodied the IDGAF era’s obsession with raw beauty (skin so washed-out that black and white film gave it some glow), rebellion without a cause, and an almost toxic allure that could only be reaped through rejecting wellness culture and embracing completely unauthorised, uncanny self-destruction. With fragility forging its way forward as a fashion statement, photographers like Corinne Day, David Sorrenti, and Lionel Deluy shaped this aesthetic by moulding their models down to thin, dishevelled figures with hollowed-out cheeks and a smouldering gaze to sell millions. Sienna comments,

“It’s crazy that skinniness has come back in fashion. Drugs shouldn’t go in and out of fashion. Body types shouldn’t go in and out of fashion. They shouldn’t, but they do.”

In the digital age, these harmful cyclical beauty standards have intensified. Our loved and cherished influencers embodying the dangerously thin “heroin chic” look perpetuates this obsession, hinting that suffering is akin to being beautiful. TikTok has also fostered trends that embrace gaunt, sallow aesthetics—like the 2020 “Tim Burton character” trend, where users pull their cheeks down to mimic the hollow-eyed look of Burton’s creations. Notably pale and thin, the director’s stylised characters often lack representation of diverse identities, spurring some fans on to imagine themselves within the Tim Burton realm, dusting their flesh in washed-out, cool-toned makeup and licks of muddy contour. Adding to the trend, influencer Sara Carstens popularised dark under-eye circles using old-blood-coloured brown, purple and red makeup to create an “effortlessly grunge” look. While some celebrate the normalisation of eye-bags, others express frustration; these traits, before criticised as giveaways of fatigue or sickness, are now “trendy.” As one user explained to Glamour Magazine, “I’ve been made fun of…but now since a pretty girl did it, it’s a trend.” This resurgence in romanticising frailty, thinness, and signs of wear echoes a troubling cycle to come, as beauty standards become actively distorted and shaped by social media.

I LOVE U @GABBRIETTE. I LOVE U @HUNTERSCHAFER. I LOVE U @ALEXCONSANI. I LOVE U @PERFECT_ANGELGIRL. I LOVE DEATH AND METH AND SEX AND BEING SKINNY AND BEING PALE. I LOVE BEING YOUNG. I LOVE BEING A GIRL.

Pioneering this radical shift in what beauty can and should mean is Glamour’s Game Changing Voice of The Year award winner, Jameela Jamil who, through her I Weigh platform, is calling out the current toxic obsession with the weight of our meat-suit. She is offering an alternative vision of beauty that celebrates the whole person—accomplishments, strength, and mental health over numbers on a scale. Her refusal to accept diet culture as the status quo is loud - especially in an era when the clean girl aesthetic is a pervasive standard. Jamil is adamant: beauty does not equal suffering. "Look however you want to look…But I draw the line at pain, suffering, and risking our lives", she says at the Glamour Women of the Year Awards 2024. She pushes back against the idea that looking "sick" or "fragile" somehow equals desirable or edgy. I Weigh invites users to reimagine beauty, ascertaining that self-worth isn’t tethered to how much you weigh or how closely you resemble the narrowest, most elusive ideal.

As she puts it, “Boys are encouraged to build their bodies, and build their futures and legacies. While women and girls are starving, injecting and hurting – and sometimes literally dying – for the fastest possible route to the ever-changing, fickle beauty standard.” This disappointing contrast is a lived reality for many, including models like Sienna who, in her own experience, reflects on how, “When you’re younger you’re told “Don’t do drugs they’ll kill you.” But I found out that they don’t kill you and started joining in the fun…Now I look back like, fuck. I feel like there needs to be more education around them.” Her reflection underscores the urgent need to turn our heads in the direction of broader, more honest conversations about damaging behaviours, opening a dialogue with young people. In an environment where thinness, sometimes achieved through dangerous means, is still upheld as the ultimate marker of beauty, the normalisation of drug use and extreme body standards often goes unchecked. As Sienna notes, there is a clear gap in education— “In PSHE girls are taught about contraception and boys are taught about the economy but there is no real education about drugs…just that they are bad and that they’ll kill you.” She points out how there’s almost no proper discourse around the long-term impact of these choices. This gap in awareness is especially alarming when young girls are bombarded with distorted beauty ideals that encourage suffering in the name of aesthetics.

Whilst we’re on this hot topic, airing from mid-September 2024, Bethany Platt’s storyline in Coronation Street illustrates the potential physical toll of chasing idealised beauty. In pursuit of an unattainable aesthetic, Bethany undergoes liposuction abroad, only to face severe complications and a life-altering stoma. Her story mirrors Jamil’s plea: “I beg of you…to not sell your old lady self short. Don’t take her for granted.” Jamil, who lives with a “body broken forever” from her own sacrifices for beauty, warns of the long-term consequences of quick-fix beauty treatments that often lead to permanent damage. She advocates for filling our bodies with “energy and life and joyful experiences,” a message of respect for one's future self over fleeting, relentless ideals, and the importance of embracing a broader, healthier definition of beauty. ( Glamour Women of the Year Awards 2024.)

In a similar vein, Cameron Russell, a former model, has used her platform to expose the fashion industry's toxic relationship with beauty and exploitation. She admits to having benefited from what she calls the "genetic lottery," but she’s also quick to point out that the "model" body isn’t just a physical trait—it's a construct. As she notes that beauty is defined by, “tall slender figures, femininity, and white skin". Russell urges society to rethink what it means to be beautiful, exposing how models like herself are commodified and objectified. She critiques the fashion industry's reliance on "image," which she defines as both powerful and superficial, calling it “a system of extraction,” where the bodies of women are reduced to mere products to be sold. Russell reveals in an interview earlier this year with Amanpour and Company “I sucked in my stomach until my ribs poked out,” when pressured in shoots, and emphasises that these demands are about aesthetics, just as much as control and exploitation. Through her own experiences, Russell shows just how damaging it is when young girls are told that their value lies in their appearance, and not their voice, talents, or minds. As she poignantly puts it, "These are not pictures of me; they are constructions created by professionals.” (Looks aren’t everything. Believe me, I’m a model. Cameron Russell, TED Talk, 2013)   

We’ve seen it before—this macabre cycle, where frailty and suffering are romanticised, where beauty is stitched into skin and bone. The fight against toxic beauty ideals is not just about rejecting a narrow, destructive aesthetic and it’s not about dismantling the systems that uphold them. It’s about upholding the systems that dismantle them.

“We could stop asking how do we fix what is, and we could start imagining what we want in the world”

These words by Mariam Kaba remind us that real change begins not by fixing what is already broken, but by imagining and creating something new, something better. Driven by voices like Jameela Jamil, Cameron Russell, and Sienna— they beg us to reject the death grip of impossible beauty standards. Beauty does not equal suffering. It never should. Now, we must look beyond the remnants of what the world tells us beauty should be. Imagine something better, something alive, something whole. Choose life, choose love, choose to break free from the clutches of deathly ideals—and choose to define beauty on your own terms.