From bikini operation to summer glow-up: aesthetic pressure is renewed on social media.

The aesthetic pressure never ceases; it simply seeks ways to adapt and renew itself. The latest trend is to dress in self-care, because this way you choose your own aesthetic demands; it doesn't feel like you're being coerced. From a place of self-care, empowerment, and self-love, it's hard to see how you accept all the nonsense about what your body should look like as a woman, and thus distort the body shame that aesthetic pressure and diet culture instill in us from a very young age.

From childhood, we receive commands about how our bodies should be, and measures to discipline them through food and exercise. “Good girls don't eat like that,” “Girls are prettier if they don't gain weight,” “Be careful, my girl, don't gain weight, you don't want a belly like mine.” This is how women learn that our bodies are a life project, at the service of others' eyes. Pleasing the eye is more important than living peacefully and at peace with them.

Thanks to social media, these mandates continue to grow and renew, amplified and promoted at lightning speed. Just look at girls using creams and serums for problems they don't have . They use retinol for nonexistent wrinkles and spend more than half an hour a day checking their skin and preventing the impact of a life they haven't yet lived. It's better to start sooner rather than later: aging isn't something women are allowed.

This is how girls begin to live with hypervigilance toward their bodies, how they look, forgetting about playing, about everything their body allows them to do; the most important thing is to be beautiful and have perfect skin. Compared to previous years, the bikini operation is no longer so blatantly promoted on social media. You know: they called it bikini operation because we are the target.

If that pressure and aesthetic demand were meant to affect both sexes equally, they would have called it "Operation Swimsuit ," but no. Only we women must have a certain body type, which just happens to meet beauty standards, to be able to wear a bikini. We can call it chance, or coincidence, but it's misogyny.

Perhaps because younger generations are more aware of feminism, or because there's a current trend toward sparkles , the bikini operation has become a new slogan: it's now called summer glow up . It's basically the same: arriving at summer as your best self, which, of course—to no one's surprise—is slimmer, fitter, and with smoother skin. Same dog, different collar.

There's another challenge circulating that sends shivers down my spine: 75Hard . It proposes that, for seventy-five days, you take care of your diet, exercise, photograph your body every day to track progress, and read at least ten pages of a non-fiction book.

If we break it down, it can be seen as a change of habits and a way to document it, but in reality, it's a spartan training regime. It suggests that, on those days—seventy-five, no more, no less—you should train twice a day, forty-five minutes each session, and that at least one of them be outdoors. It recommends drinking almost four liters of water; that's why social media is full of people carrying a thermos the size of a water cooler. At the same time, it encourages a diet that doesn't include any ultra-processed foods or foods of low nutritional quality, where cravings are met with healthy options. And, of course, no alcohol.

It's essential to take a daily photo, because if the effects of this challenge aren't visible in your body, what kind of progress is it? The challenge is relentless: no excuses or mistakes are allowed. If one day you can't train, or you can't keep up and end up eating an unfit chocolate croissant, you're back to square one. You start the challenge from day one. Can this be called self-care?

In the 2000s, the rise in eating disorders was marked by a fashion trend that emerged in the United Kingdom: the famous heroin chic or size zero . Models were extremely thin, gaunt, and very pale; their appearance was grunge, but it simulated the effects of heroin. Soon, this trend and millions of teenagers around the world fell into the hell of eating disorders . At that time, there were also the Pro-Ana (anorexia) and Pro-Mia (bulimia) blogs, which were communities that encouraged purging and restrictive behaviors with food and exercise.

These blogs haven't disappeared; instead, thanks to social media, they've multiplied and expanded their reach. On the social network TikTok, there's a community called skinnytok where extreme thinness is championed, challenges are proposed to achieve it, and everything else you can imagine. If you were a teenager in the '90s or '00s, you went through a wave of size zero, which, at the very least, left you with a very bad relationship with food and your body. Now, in your forties, or late forties, the universe is giving you the opportunity to fall back into size zero, and precisely at a vulnerable time due to the physical changes experienced in this decade.

It doesn't just expose us again: it does so with our daughters, nieces, and students. They are under even greater pressure. Since the COVID pandemic , eating disorders have skyrocketed worldwide, especially among girls and adolescents. In Spain, hospital admissions for eating disorders in minors have increased by 11% annually since 2016, with a worrying increase of 26–28% annually in the 10- to 14-year-old group since 2019. Globally, these admissions doubled after March 2020.

It's no coincidence: aesthetic pressure, amplified by social media, is hitting younger and younger. It has been observed that, as early as seven years old, many children already express concern about their bodies, influenced by what they see on the internet and in their surroundings.

We can't look the other way: out of responsibility for our girls, nieces, daughters, and students, we need to build real protection networks and systems. It's not enough to give them a cell phone and hope it doesn't affect them. If we don't act, diet culture and body shaming will continue to grow at the expense of their mental health and childhood.

NOURISH WITH SCIENCE This is a section on nutrition based on scientific evidence and the knowledge verified by specialists. Eating is much more than a pleasure and a necessity: diet and eating habits are currently the public health factor that can most help us prevent numerous diseases, from many types of cancer to diabetes. A team of dietitians and nutritionists will help us better understand the importance of nutrition and, thanks to science, debunk the myths that lead us to eat poorly.