The 90s and 00s were a toxic time to be a woman in the public eye, as Victoria Beckham has recently reminded us. Trouble is, spite and cruelty towards women never went out of fashion …Were you a young woman in the 90s or 00s? If so, you (and me!) really ought to be entitled to compensation. We may not have had to deal with social media influencers giving their Labubus butt implants (this is a thing now), but it was a toxic time to be a woman. British tabloids were full of topless Page 3 girls, and we were fed a steady diet of body-shaming magazines, heroin-chic fashion and the idea that Bridget Jones, who weighed only 62kg (9st 10lb), was disgustingly fat.If you’ve forgotten how awful things were, just look online: reminders keep going viral. Last week, for example, clips of shock jock Howard Stern’s infamous 2000s “Buttaface Competition” started circulating on social media. This was a contest to find the “best” body and “ugliest” face, which involved women parading around in bikinis with paper bags on their heads. In one clip the crowd starts mock retching as a very conventionally attractive woman takes the bag off her head. I don’t know where that woman is now, but I hope she is living her best life.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading…
