The Beauty Standard is Impossibly Skinny-Curvy, Not Childlike

Beauty standards don't have to be pedophilic to be unattainable or harmful.

Fairly frequently on Substack, actress/writer Jameela Jamil goes viral. She’s a decent writer and nothing she says is terribly controversial, but she has a talent for inspiring both outsized praise and ire. Take, for example, when she wrote about why she doesn’t want children. It was a pretty boilerplate 2010s-era “leave childfree women alone!!!!” thing, and yet, it inspired numerous responses that boiled down to, “You don’t want to be around children? Now just imagine if ‘children’ were replaced with JEWS.” (I wrote about that whole drama here, but basically, I think people took her piece way too seriously and kind of validated her defensiveness.)

But anyway, she has a new take that has hit both Substack and YouTube—that our modern beauty standards were hijacked by a shadowy force of powerful pedophiles who, despite what “real” men are into, are trying to convince women to look as childlike (ie: literally prepubescent) as possible. She writes:

many women, grown women, even ones in their thirties, now go far out of their way to adjust their aesthetics, faces, bodies, voice and mannerisms, to mimic that of a pre pubescent girl. For the male gaze.

To be clear, a prepubescent girl would be a girl anywhere from five to ten years old.

This isn’t an unpopular take at all, by the way. I’ve heard it in various forms over many years, and there’s a reason her article has almost 7,000 likes. I will concede where she’s right: as proven by the Epstein case, there are certain powerful people in our society who are pedophiles and who prey on minors (I’m not going to quibble about the ephebophile/pedophile distinction, even if it technically exists—I’m already on the ephebophiles’ shitlist for saying there was no need to “destigmatize” attraction to minors.) Also, credit where it’s due. Her line, “My knees resemble Donald Trump a little more each day” made me chuckle out loud.

But I disagree with the QAnon-adjacent belief that there is a connected, powerful force (ie: a cabal, even if she’s not directly saying it) who are pulling the strings behind various media apparatuses to trick everyone into thinking like pedophiles, and gaslighting women into not wanting to look “womanly.”

I also fundamentally don’t think our beauty standards for women—as unattainable and harmful as they may be!—are meant to mold women into the image of children. I don’t even believe the beauty ideal is to look sixteen, unless “sixteen” is referring to sixteen-year-olds who actually look twenty. The beauty ideal is to look somewhere between the ages of 18-25, forever (although obviously, men find you attractive far longer than that). While our culture is still profoundly ageist, the beauty standard is not “look like a high schooler,” unless that high schooler is 24-year-old Sydney Sweeney in Euphoria. I know this because fifteen-year-olds do not see themselves as the peak age of attractiveness. If a teenage girl wants to look attractive, she probably wants to emulate the looks of a woman in her early twenties. She will point to influencers on Instagram or TikTok, for example—and those people will be unambiguously postpubescent.

What gets people tripped up (and where I think Jamil got tripped up) is the concept of “curves,” and the idea that curves are vilified by the aforementioned pedophilic society. For a long time, “curves” have become synonymous with “realness” and with the body positivity movement. Without thinking, people will parrot the idea that “society” hates curves, most “real” men like curves, and curves are good (ergo, no curves are bad.)

So is our society anti-curve? It depends on how you define curve! There are generally two definitions: the ratio of body measurements (bust/waist/hips) wherein a “curvy” woman would have a small waist in proportion to her bust and hips/butt regardless of her body size, and “not skinny” which would basically mean every plus-size woman is “curvy.” I adhere to the former definition. Jameela Jamil seems to combine and conflate the two. She gives examples of “curvy, womanly” sex idols who buck these toxic beauty standards (the women who men really like, in spite of the aforementioned cabal) some of whom actually have incredibly unattainable bodies—surgically altered, even! For example, one of her examples is Ashley Graham, who is curvy in both senses (plus-size and hourglass). Another is Kim Kardashian, who has had enough plastic surgery to create a separate humanoid from scratch. Both of these women have bodies that are completely unattainable for your average woman, no matter her weight.

(Yes, I know someone reading this is going to be like, Hey, that’s not true! I look exactly like Kim Kardashian except with bigger boobs and butt! I’m real! I exist! but that does not disprove my point. Anyone who naturally looks like Kim Kardashian is an outlier.)

Our society and our beauty standards are not anti-curve. If they were, Kim Kardashian would be some niche weird fetish character, not a wildly successful influencer whose body basically dominated all body image discussions for ten entire years. The entire influencer ecosystem would not be getting plastic surgery to look like SHEIN Kim Kardashian. I would not open Instagram, say, “Wow, Kim Kardashian looks different” and then realize it’s actually one of millions of bizarro Kim Kardashians. Kim Kardashian is not someone after whom men secretly lust, in spite of those darned pedophilic beauty standards. If anything, men seem to think Kim Kardashian is a bit phony and over-the-top, despite being blasted with images of her on a near-constant basis for most of the past decade.

If a man has a weird “hear me out” it’s not going to be Kim Kardashian. It’s going to be like, Amy Klobuchar or something.

Personally, I commend all the horny men brave enough to resist the societal pressure not to find Kim Kardashian hot. Thank you for your service, you revolutionaries.

Kim’s mantle was eventually passed to her younger sister (who, I should add, also needed to surgically enhance her curves to step into the limelight!) In 2013, Kylie Jenner was a teenage girl with the somewhat straight-shaped body of a typical teenage girl (I won’t post photos because I don’t want to post photos of teenage girls here, just take my word for it.) If looking teenage and non-curvy had been enough for her to be a sex icon, she wouldn’t have changed a thing. But we actually live in a culture that, at least in the 2010s, venerated such extreme curves on an otherwise skinny body that would be A.) unrealistic for 99% of women and B.) just about as far from “looking like a child” as you can get, unless that child has taped basketballs to her body as a prank. And Kylie was already surgically enhanced by 2016, but has seemingly done more! The goal is not to look prepubescent. The goal is to make the waist as small as possible while enhancing the breasts, hips and butt as much as possible. It’s not a matter of weight loss or fitness—it’s a matter of sliding measurements around like you’re creating a Sim. (I’m aware most women aren’t doing this or have any desire to do this; I’m talking about the tip-top beauty-standard-setting celebrities.)

If you define “curves” as “overall larger body size + hourglass” it can be hard to reconcile what is actually the beauty ideal, which is increasingly implausible proportions of a tiny waist, skinny arms, gigantic boobs, a gigantic ass, and hips that are proportionately very wide compared to the waist—all on a skinny body. Don’t forget some clear muscle tone, and preferably abs. Crazy? Yes. Pedophilia? No.

I agree with Jamil that our beauty standards are insanely unattainable. What I don’t agree with is that these are inspired by children or set forth by pedophiles. I can say a million negative things about how ridiculous these standards are (and actually, I have said it) but this is not “pedophilic.” We are not expected to look like eleven-year-olds. We are expected to look like AI porn of twenty-two-year-olds.

I Googled AI porn for this, lol, I did not generate it. Don’t yell at me! It’s an example!!

This expectation is not being astroturfed by any beauty standard cabal, but is actually an exaggeration of what heterosexual men generally find attractive, propped up in part by all the other tools at our disposal (surgery, Photoshop, Facetune, filters, AI, what have you) on social media and an abundance of free Internet porn. All of these forces have combined to give young people ridiculous ideas about the proportions that are typical for a woman to have. The reason they are so popular is precisely because they are loosely based on heterosexual men’s average tastes, and extreme enough to make women feel terrible and want to buy more products.

Also, before men get defensive: I do not think men actually expect women to look like Instagram e-girls. Most men find this degree of enhancement a bit uncanny and weird. Men will fall in love with lots of women, many of whom look nothing like Kim Kardashian or any other sex icon. But this aesthetic, as exaggerated as it’s become, is based on a wild exaggeration of what heterosexual men like—not an unnatural, perverted agenda antithetical to men’s true preferences.

I am currently running a survey where everyone of all genders and sexualities can express their degree of attraction to different digitally-generated body types of both men and women. It’s for science, I swear! I used digitally generated bodies for consistency, and to avoid subjecting real people to being rated against their will. So far, the female body that men are most likely to cite as their “ideal” is a slim one with clear curvature, albeit still in the realm of biological possibility. Bodies that are curvy but not slim, or slim but not curvy, were not as popular (although quite literally every body had men who considered it the ideal, so let’s not fret too much.) Either way, “curves” in this sense literally means “a bigger difference between waist/bust/hips,” which is outside of the false dichotomy of “voluptuous fertility goddess” and “childlike stick.” There are women who are skinny and curvy (our current societal ideal) and there are women who are neither.

This exact dichotomy (curvy vs. skinny) bothers me for several reasons: first of all, as a pedant, it’s inaccurate and incomplete. But second of all, it’s important to note that most women are not curvy. Yes, even when eating enough. A woman with a narrow waist and wide hips will still remain curvy at a size 00. A ruler-shaped woman will not be curvy at a size 2 or a size 20. Breasts are related to body fat, but there are women who still have smaller or larger boobs in proportion to their waist no matter how much they weigh. In fact, a 2005 study noted that when measuring ratio, not overall size, 46% of American women (a plurality) are ruler-shaped, or straight-shaped. This means the most “realistic” ideal of what a woman’s body looks like is actually not curvy at all. Discussion of body positivity cannot in good faith describe “curves” as some kind of taboo-busting, counter-cultural rebellion. If you mean to say “weight” just say it.

(Also, I know that not all women are American, and some ethnicities might tend toward wider hips or narrower waists than others. I don’t really want to get into Titties & Ass Phrenology today, but just as there are ethnicities that trend curvier than the average American, there are also ethnicities which trend less curvy.)

Obviously, all women are “real women.” I’m not trying to reverse-uno the idea that “real women have curves” and imply that curvy women are fake. But when the topic of body positivity and “unrealistic standards” comes up, women with exaggerated hourglass figures (including, hilariously, Kim Kardashian!) are used as examples of “real bodies” that men like, which the pedophile cabal has deemed undesirable. In fact, these women are widely known to be desirable. Women want to look like them! Lots of women want to be curvier, they just don’t want to gain weight in their stomachs or be overweight. In fact, women are literally dying for bigger asses.

Just as an example, from my earlier survey, this is a woman with mathematically “curvy” proportions, who is slim. Before you tell me “this isn’t actually curvy,” I input the measurements myself. “She” has a 0.63% waist-hip ratio, which is curvier than the 0.7% ideal. If you don’t think this is curvy, it’s because you too have been influenced by our actual beauty standard gaslighting you that “all women would be an exaggerated hourglass with a flat stomach if they ate a freaking sandwich!”

Now, this is a woman who is not quite as skinny, perhaps a straight size M, but also not curvy. More women have this body type than the former, and if they lost or gained weight, they would still not have an hourglass figure:

This is a woman who is also more M/L than XS, who is very curvy with a flat stomach. While women with this body type are frequently shown as the “realistic” ideal within the body positivity movement, most women don’t look like this at any weight!

If you meet a woman who is straight-shaped, with a flat chest, a small butt, narrow hips and a rectangular waist, she will not feel like the beauty ideal! She might agree that our society venerates skinny bodies, but she will disagree, for example, with Jamil’s assertion that our culture is…*checks notes* anti-boob. I’m sorry, no. Our culture is very much pro-boob. Sydney Sweeney is considered a mainstream sex icon in part because she has big boobs. How did the pedophiles let Sydney Sweeney slip through?! I also remember a time recently when a photo of Sydney Sweeney was bashed by various body-shaming gremlins for not being sexy enough, and it wasn’t because she looked too womanly. It was because—gasp—her waist isn’t naturally corseted:

And funny enough, this flies directly in the face of the whole pedophilia thing. A child doesn’t have a curvy waist!

Now, before anyone mentions it, I should highlight the high fashion industry (and runway models) because this is one arena where not having big boobs, hips or an ass is probably an asset. Fashion models are built like coat hangers, and often far skinnier than is healthy or attainable, even for naturally slim women. Despite the fact that curvy-slim is the ideal, they are often not curvy. But I reject the idea that your average woman wants to look like a runway model, or has anyone telling her she must look like one to get a man. Almost my entire life (and I’m 36, not 22) I’ve heard constant reminders that men don’t find runway models attractive. I have been informed, against my will, that the only reason runway models aren’t curvy is because they are selected by “gay men.” (Gay men are apparently attracted to skinny women, in addition to men? Big if true!) I have never once worried that my husband was fantasizing about runway models (for one, he doesn’t even know where to find them—what’s he going to do, read Vogue? lmao) Today’s “male gaze” beauty standard is simply not that of a high-fashion runway model. It’s an Instagram or TikTok influencer, who is likely using a combination of surgery, photo tricks or poses to appear as slender-waisted and as curvaceous (ratio-wise) as possible.

This is not an ideal inspired by children—this is an ideal inspired by an extreme exaggeration of what men genuinely find attractive. And often it goes too far! It’s unattainable, it’s toxic, and veers into uncanny territory. But it’s not pedophilia.

Runway models are also frequently underage. I think this is bad. As Phoebe Maltz Bovy has pointed out before, this is in part due to the high degree of demands for the role, and the fact that minors are easier to control and underpay. As the aforementioned Phoebe so expertly states, better than I ever could:

If you hire people too young to be in the workforce otherwise, they don’t assert themselves. This is relevant to sex stuff but also, less excitingly but on a wider scale, to the thing where models don’t get paid for their work. This is also why, I suspect, I got catcalled if you could call it that far more as an awkward-looking 12-year-old than as a reasonably good-looking 22-year-old, in NYC in both cases. Men preying on vulnerability is not the same as men thinking 12 is prettier than 22.

Obviously, there are predatory, horrible men involved in the fashion industry. I do not think that 14-year-olds should be runway models. I think kids that age should be in school and behaving like kids, socializing with other kids (and in my case, annoying the bajeezus out of everyone at theater camp). But there are many, increasingly implausible leaps between observing this (very bad and unethical) thing, and insisting that our mainstream beauty standards are antithetical to what real men find attractive, and that they’re all being influenced by a secret council of pedophiles.

I also agree that our culture fetishizes youth in ways that have gone too far. I am still horrified that Britney Spears, at sixteen, was broadcast to the entire nation in a sexy schoolgirl costume (which, might I remind you, was almost 30 years ago). It’s one of those things where you look at it, and you say, How was this allowed? But I feel like it’s also worth pointing out that this probably wouldn’t fly today (and that’s good, actually). Again, I do not think your average insecure, self-hating, body-obsessed woman aspires to look sixteen or resemble a high school student. She probably aspires to look like a twenty-year-old influencer.

And speaking of the ‘90s, I think there is a slight generational difference between Jameela Jamil and myself. I was a kid in the ‘90s (although what I recall of beauty standards from that era was indisputably pro-boob. Pro gigantic boob, in fact.) But there is a difference between the beauty standards of 1994 versus 2004 versus 2014. However, regardless of whether Kim Kardashian or Cindy Crawford was the sex idol du jour, I have never actually seen the mainstream beauty standard say that big boobs or curvy waists were unattractive, or that to be attractive meant looking like a literal child. I’ve seen the mainstream beauty standard promote impossible thinness, but usually in combination with other womanly traits, such as breasts or an hourglass waist. See: 2000s Victoria’s Secret.

One more point: body hair. Obviously, the mainstream beauty standard is the removal of most body hair, as Jamil mentions. It seems the only remaining type of female body hair still up for debate in mainstream hetero society is pubic hair. I actually did a separate survey on this covering thousands of people, and most men—even young men—are perfectly fine with some pubic hair, so it’s not that big of a taboo to have pubes. But I get that it can be a source of insecurity for women.

I understand the thought process that can lead you to “removal of pubic hair = pedophilia” but for that matter, so is the removal of armpit hair, leg hair, and any other body hair, all of which appear at puberty. It’s far more likely that porn (and the fact that when pubic hair is removed, the camera can uh…see more) along with more revealing bikini styles, contributed to the normalization of pubic hair removal, not the mass-gaslighting of America into crypto-pedophilia.

Most people with a working brain understand that it’s perfectly natural for grown women to have body hair, but perhaps because men have more body hair than women, even in our un-altered forms, the lack of body hair falsely becomes coded as a female secondary sex characteristic. It seems that whenever showing off a part of the female body becomes normalized, mass-removal of the hair comes shortly after. Shaving one’s legs, for example, became popular around the turn of the century, when women became somewhat more likely to bare their legs. I do not believe that there was a secret army of pedophiles tricking women into shaving their legs, rubbing their chins evilly and saying, “Ah, now we wait—long after we’re dead, they might shave their pubes too!”

Ultimately, the reason I disagree with this “beauty standards are pedophilia” discourse is that it frames women without “curves” as overgrown children, whom only pedophiles would find attractive. Not to get all “let men be masculine” on you, but this is really just another form of body-shaming, even if it’s not intended that way. Non-curvy women exist in multitudes (as I said before, most women aren’t actually that curvy) and yet a movement designed to shed light on “what women really look like” completely leaves them in the dust because they don’t look like they could have been painted on a cave wall. Despite the insistence that Sabrina Carpenter is pandering to some male-pedophile gaze, I feel like I am constantly reminded (again, against my will) that men find her inexplicably repulsive. Every other day, someone asks, “Why do I, as a man, not find Sabrina Carpenter hot?” followed by a million people examining all the reasons Sabrina Carpenter is not womanly enough, akshually and looks like a little girl. Like, leave Sabrina Carpenter alone, please. LEAVE SABRINA ALONE!!!! She is a grown woman, who, despite being short and not very curvy, clearly looks like an adult woman! Why is she catching all these strays?

Also, sorry, but…you all would. I think men are actually lying about Sabrina Carpenter, or they’re unable to differentiate her as a person from her campy Minnie Mouse persona. There’s no way men are spamming every woman, of every age, of every body size and shape on Tinder but would miraculously lose their erection over Sabrina Carpenter. Get real.

Sorry, that was off-topic. I just had to say it. It’s my Substack, and I can say it.

I think it’s fine to speak out against unrealistic beauty standards. I think it’s good to remind women that actually, they don’t have to look twenty forever and they don’t have to cover their imperfections. While I haven’t eschewed beauty standards (sue me, I like to look hot) I am a mother of two who has no qualms about wearing a bikini even when my stomach wrinkles (which were ridiculed all over Twitter) are in full display. I think Jameela Jamil’s heart is in the right place! But our beauty standards can be misogynistic, unattainable and unhealthy without being propped up by a secret council of pedophiles. Insecurity sells. Inadequacy sells. Making people feel like they need to buy your product to look hot sells. And right now, “hot” is about being an impossible combination of skinny + curvy, not looking like a ten-year-old. You don’t need pedophilia to make people buy your stuff out of insecurity—you only need to make people feel crappy. And Instagram, TikTok and the influencer economy is doing a great job of that already.