A Beauty Ideal of Extreme Thinness Is the Opposite of “Longevity”

14.05.2026, 02:29 allure.com

Even if you don’t keep a sharp eye on the current celebrity coverage, you’ve most likely noticed some remarkable photos cutting into your feed in recent months. Remarkable in their featuring of razor-sharp shoulder blades, protruding collarbones, Olive Oyl arms, even visible ribs. There’s a vast shrinkage going on among the famous names that have a substantial impact on our beauty standards. Some of our most visible celebrities have gone from merely thin to gravely gaunt.

I doubt this is the first story you’ve read about the phenomenon, calling out how troubling it is to see. In an interview this spring about The Devil Wears Prada 2, even Meryl Streep remarked on what she saw at recent fashion shows. "I was struck by how not only beautiful and young—everyone seems young to me—but alarmingly thin the models were. I thought that all had been addressed years ago. Annie [Hathaway] clocked it too, and she made a beeline to the producers about it, securing promises that the models in the show that we were putting together for our film would not be so skeletal!”

I’ve never been interested in critiquing anyone’s body and especially the bodies of women in the public eye, who’ve been historically criticized and condemned for their shape and size; in fact, I believe those kinds of observations are destructive and often malevolent. But, after much internal debate—and debate with my editor—I felt I had to address the part of this conversation that, for me, is just too troubling to ignore: Many of the gaunt are famous women over 50, even over 60. You’re probably aware that extreme thinness is a concerning health issue for girls and young women–but for those of us in mid-life and well beyond? It can be truly disastrous.

Some of our most visible celebrities have gone from merely thin to gravely gaunt.

On a recent random scroll through Instagram traffic, I slammed to a sudden stop at a video clip of Demi Moore at an event several weeks ago, looking frighteningly skeletal. I sat for a moment, stunned by the image before I noticed the lead comment, honking something like, “Demi Moore, aging like a fine wine…”

First, women are not wine—or donuts, or strawberries, or vaginas (at least not only vaginas), as we are often referred to in marketing of all kinds, but especially beauty marketing. And though I understand the metaphor about improving with age, this one sours pretty quickly when you consider that even a fine wine at some point will turn to vinegar (in general, the point at which a woman is no longer perceived as reproductively viable). Moore, at 63, presents as a much younger woman. I suppose this is what precipitated the comment suggesting that she is aging well. But aging well is not about looking younger. It’s about being healthy, and consequently looking healthy. And there seems to be some confusion about that.

The ramifications of an unhealthily low BMI (as a rule, under 18.5) are legion and unpleasant, especially if you’d prefer not to die early: It’s associated with an increased risk of mortality, one that’s significantly more than in a woman with what's considered a normal BMI. It’s also associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. That’s the really bad news.

Aging well is not about looking younger. It’s about being healthy, and consequently looking healthy.

The run-of-the-mill bad news is that underweight women often suffer from reduced muscle mass (sarcopenia), which older people in general are prone to, and low bone density—another perimenopause/menopause pitfall best avoided, as it increases the risk of fractures. Might you be concerned about your aging skin? Excessively thin women are prone to chronic skin fragility and skin tears (dermatoporosis). And that’s in addition to the normal age-related increased skin fragility that often results in bruising.

And while we’re on the topic of skin, you might have noticed that faces—even the faces of young women—when they’re extremely thin, emphasize characteristics caused by age, among them sunken eyes and cheeks.

The point is that women in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and beyond, if we want to age well, need to be aiming for the opposite of the image that Moore and many of her Hollywood peers present. We need to be thinking about ways to increase physical strength, focusing on healthy nutrition, building bone density and muscle mass, and maintaining both physical and mental agility. In our later 70s and 80s, there may come a time when we experience unintended weight loss and consequential frailty that could limit our movement. All the more reason to keep our bodies as robust as possible while we can.

I find it so disturbing to hold up ultra-thin celebrities as an ideal of aging.

That’s why I find it so disturbing to hold up ultra-thin celebrities as an ideal of aging. Studies have indicated that eating disorders among women over 50 have increased. The stresses, physical and emotional, of perimenopause—hormonal changes, weight gain, mood swings—can increase a woman’s vulnerability to disordered eating. Not to mention life-changes such as kids leaving home, caring for aging parents, recalibrating the sufficiency (or insufficiencies) of a marriage among shifting responsibilities.

Then there are the unrealistic cultural beauty ideals. One study reports: With the increased weight gain predictable in menopausal women and the increased socio-cultural pressures promoting an ever thinner and more youthful ideal, many women engage in extreme behaviors to delay the natural signs of aging. Another study noted that over 50% of women of “normal weight” report increased body dissatisfaction and more discontent with their bodies in their 50s, as compared with their younger years. (“Normal weight” was considered the CDC’s guidelines of a BMI between 18.5 and 24.9.)

All this, of course, makes sense: The further we get from the cultural beauty ideal—youthful, (ever more) slender, hypersexualized—the more vulnerable we are to a desire to control or modify our appearance. When the options for modification and control increase—thank you, Mounjaro—what we see is, for example, a Hollywood awards ceremony featuring a score of actresses who might give new meaning to the term “human frailty.”

There are many reasons a person might find herself struggling to maintain a healthy weight, including illness, psychological or physical. Several years ago, there were discussions—not all of them kind—around the actor Chadwick Boseman’s diminished physique, when none of us knew he was fighting cancer. The Princess of Wales’ shrinking silhouette was also reported on before she revealed her own diagnosis. Moore recounts in her autobiography that she struggled with eating disorders and other addictions even while establishing a career ablaze with remarkable performances. It’s impossible not to recognize her courage and grit and resilience—and to feel compassion for her. I can imagine there are many people who might call me out (or call me something else) for commenting on the bodies of public figures or suggesting that these celebrities are damaging influences: “Women tearing down other women! Leave them alone!”

And they would be right in saying that I don’t know what’s going on in the real lives of Demi Moore or Nicole Kidman or Michelle Yeoh or Cynthia Erivo or any of the other women whose frail frames have concerned me in recent months. But as the frailty seems to be spreading, it’s clear in my mind that this is a trend, not a health epidemic. And in highlighting the trend—one that is objectively alarming—it’s not my intention to tear anyone down.

But I believe celebrities—when they consistently make the choice to stand in the public eye—have a responsibility to lead by example. If any of them were my sister, I wouldn’t be among those fans applauding and idolizing them (or among the stylists dressing their bodies in designs that highlight for the cameras knife-edged clavicles and shoulder blades). I would be trying to help them be responsible to themselves, so that they could be responsible to those millions of women who quite rightly admire them.

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