Tumblr’s Thinspiration Era Still Haunts Us, From Thigh Gaps to Legging Legs

It’s taken zillennials the decade since the Tumblr era to collectively heal from it. But there are still moments we’re reminded: Those pastel-coloured Slimfast shakes that linger in the corner of Boots stores. A clip of Cassie from Skins popping up on your FYP. Deliciously Ella recipe books. And of course, any mention of that renowned Kate Moss quote – the mantra that scarred a generation: “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”. Shudder. 

Lately, hallmarks from this period of internet past have been creeping back into fashion: It started with the supposed “indie sleaze revival” and return of “heroin chic”. Then, celebrities like Kylie Jenner started dying their hair shades of pastel and wearing little bow-embellished tank tops – one pink-haired selfie she posted to Instagram last month sent people into a nostalgic spin. And this week, “leggings legs” emerged: A repackaged, TikTok-branded version of the “thigh gap”. This, for the uninitiated, was the triangular wedge of thin air you were supposed to have poking out the bottom of your American Apparel skater skirt back in the day – the ultimate marker of Tumblr-skinny, and the beauty ideal that haunted a generation.

The “leggings legs” trend gained traction as quickly as its backlash: The hashtag has already racked up 33 million views on TikTok and is filled with rows of videos of mostly young girls in tight gym leggings or yoga pants: “Do my legs legging?” one user asks, as she contorts her legs apart in front the selfie camera. Invariably – according to this new trend – the legs that are deemed legging-worthy are the ones where the thighs don’t touch. Who could have seen this coming?

Within days, TikTok banned the search term completely in response to concerns that this could trigger a wave of disordered eating and body image issues. Millennials who suffered through the first wave of thigh-gap era were quick to call out its resurgence: “I’m speaking on behalf of my generation,” said content creator Shannon Cole in a TikTok video with over 600,000 views. “We were traumatised by this shit, and now there are young women that are making these posts about fucking legging legs. Are you kidding me?”

She’s not the only millennial still haunted by this: For some teens growing up in the early days of the internet, there were life-threatening impacts. According to figures from NHS Digital, anorexia admissions for those aged under 19 nearly doubled from 1,050 in 2010-11 to over 2,025 by 2016-17. Internet forums like Tumblr weren’t just pictures of thigh-gapped girls in black and white, they were also a catalyst for sinister communities like “pro-ana” – or “pro-anorexia” – where mainly teens shared dangerous eating disorder tips and spurred each other on. Some photos of grungy, long-haired white girls were posted as “thinspiration”; others were more on the nose, overlaid with slogans like “starving for perfection” and “don’t eat”.

Back then, many people were still figuring out what life online looked like and how to weave it into their IRL relationships. Perhaps this is why the emergence of “legging legs” hits so hard for those who experienced it the first time around: After movements like “body positivity” and wider discussions about concepts like fatphobia, there was an unspoken presumption that we might have progressed. It’s a very different world now, right? In some ways, that’s true: Trends like “legging legs” seem to spread wider and faster now, but so does the criticism of them. 

But the fact that ideas like “legging legs” emerged in the first place – arriving as one part of the rebooted 2010s Tumblr package – is a worrying landmark for the internet. Trends always come back around, but up to now, the throwbacks have always been to pre-internet times. As we emerge from the early 2000s resurgence, we’ve reached a milestone: The current social media trend is cycling back to a past social media era.

But does that have to mean we get our past internet-fulled mistakes on steroids? Or maybe, if we recognise the internet for what it really is this time – an excellent PR machine – we can actually start making it a less horrifying place than it was in the Tumblr days.