‘You Wouldn’t Survive The 2000s’: Millennials Slam Gen Z’s ‘Y2K Skinny’ Diet Trend
Millennials are offering some heartfelt advice to the younger generations: âDonât strive to be thin! Weâve tried it, and itâs not healthy!â
With more and more people on social media announcing themselves to be âY2K thinâ or â2,000âs skinnyâ, influencer and former model Camel posted a message urging people not to embrace the trend.
- A 33 year old influencer has a strong warning for the younger generations: âY2K skinnyâ is much worse than you think it is.
- In a social media post, the Millennial admonished people in Gen Z and A for attempting to glorify how people used to look 25 years ago.
- Her message is part of a larger public opinion that some of the body positivity gains that have been made in the past 20 years are being squandered.
Her message was picked up and amplified by all sorts of Millennials offering up nuggets of wisdom.
âMama, you would not surviveâ: Millennial influencer tells younger people not to embrace âY2K skinnyâ trend
Image credits: Instagram / kailauli
Camelage of 33, wants the younginâs out there to know: You donât know.
In an Instagram post thatâs now gotten more than 187,000 likes, Uli explains that, people may think theyâre thin like when âKate Moss heroin chicâ was a thing, but actually, they are not.
She says that during the early 2,000âs people were calling JLo fatand Drew Barrymore chunky, whereas by todayâs standards, both would have been called skinny.
âAnd the reason you can call yourself skinny is because of all of the work thatâs been done to get us there,â Uli says.
Image credits: Getty / MJ Kim
She explains that she was a model back then, at 5 feet 10 inches and 130 pounds, and was often âsent home for being fat.â
âWhat we are not going to do is body shame and say âoh, Iâm y2k skinnyâ, because mama, you would not survive the 2,000âs,â she warns.
âY2k skinny is a lot worse than you guys think it was,â Uli said, before closing with the fact that she used to have ânightmares every single night that Karl Laaagerfeldâ was calling her fat.
âI could have spent my time loving lifeâ: fellow Millennials offer tales of their own regret
Her video prompted netizens of a similar age to weigh in with their own horror stories of surviving the decade.
âRaise your hand if you have been victimized by y2k standards,â one person said.
Another noted that âThe early 00s is the reason that every single millennial woman I know has body dysmorphia to this day.â
Most sounded similar alarms. The sentiment from Millennials was one of regret.
âLiterally depresses me so much that I spent my hottest, slimmest years constantly being called fat and feeling fat, when I was a perfect weight. I could have spent that time loving life and building a healthy relationship with food, instead I got yo-yo dieting and insecurity,â one person lamented.
âI took a meat cleaver to my inner thighâ: Uli talks about her own body image issues
Image credits: Getty / Chris Weeks
Ana Beatriz Barros for Victoria’s Secret, 2002 pic.twitter.com/CMcTra5VL6
– GIA (@WUGOGOODENS) October 12, 2024
In an interview with Newsweek, Kaila Uli, who grew up in LA, said one of the most âbrutalâ aspects of Y2K were the body standards.
She told Newsweek that the âpressure to lose weight was constant.â
âI think thereâs a misconception that being just a bit thinner than ânormalâ is Y2K skinny. And, on one hand, Iâm happy about that because it means we did a good job changing the body standards to be healthier,â she said of peopleâs misconceptions about how skinny people actually were back then.
@bobybraps⏠som original â monster_crazy â Monster Crazy
In the story she shared details of her life trying to make it in the modeling industry, and how ultimately, she ended up with two eating disorders.
âI started dieting at 14 once I saw photos of Jessica Simpson being called obese. There was a day where I took a meat cleaver and began trying to cleave my inner thigh fat off. I was unsuccessful because the knife was dull (thank God), but it triggered a spiral into dieting and eating disorders,â she confided.
âItâs a warning flareâ: Experts say Millennialâs warning should be heeded
Image credits: Victoriaâs Secret
According to an article on the topic in the New York PostDr.âŻHeidi Lescanec of Pink Zone frames the Y2K backlash not as an older generation criticising the younger one, but as survival wisdom:
âWhen millennial women speak now about Y2KSkinny, itâs not from superiority. Itâs from survival. Itâs a warning flare,â she says in the article.
Lescanec says Kate Mossâs infamous quote that âNothing tastes as good as skinny feelsâ left deep emotional scars on Millennials who now see it as their duty to pass down the lessons they learned so mistakes can be avoided.
@tracymaigaakeep hating, I love myselfđ⏠Shake It To The Max (FLY) â MOLIY & Silent Addy
@Meklawitade Not 2025 skinny but 2000s skinny đ #2000s#2000sfashion#tall#tallgirl#vira#viralvideos#Meklawitade#FYP ăˇă#fyp @fordmodels @Models.com @Leslie Marrow Cheek ⏠Welcome back to the Victoria secret fashion show â á´É´É˘á´ĘęąđŞ˝
Experts say the trend can fuel anxiety, low selfâworth, and disordered eating, especially in such a genetically diverse and socioeconomically varied population, where being ultra-thin is biologically impossible for many.
Also quoted in the The Post article is Stephen Buchwald of Manhattan Mental Health who says âseeing curated, unrealistic images of thinness on a daily basis can make people feel like theyâre never âgood enough.’â
While GenâŻZ is known for bodyâpositive rhetoric, critics argue that trends like âSkinnyTokâ romanticize starvation as discipline. Slogans like âIf your stomach is growling, pretend itâs applauding youâ aside, the algorithmic culture amplifies dangerous messages under playful hashtags.
Millennials poured into the comments to share their own body image struggles
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