Recently, I saw an image of two women walking down the street. Both of them were wearing a slightly different iteration of the same outfit: high-waisted, knee-length shorts with graphic T-shirts tucked in, and a pair of chunky sneakers. The look is trendy; a perfect encapsulation of the pared down, vintage-inspired aesthetic embraced by GenZ TikTok influencers who seem to take style cues from teen movies released 25 years before they were born. It is, as the kids say, a vibe. The women’s heads are cropped from the photo, leaving them unidentifiable. Based on the trendiness of the clothing alone, I’d have mistaken them for a pair of off-duty models, were it not for one key physical characteristic: the women in the picture are fat.
A tweet making fun of these women has 100K likes,” said writer Rayne Fisher Quann alongside a retweet of the photo. “But I swear to god if Bella Hadid wore this exact outfit it would be on a million ‘‘80s casual inspo’ Pinterest boards because, as always, fashion is judged exclusively by the bodies that wear it.”
