babe •
OK, forget about the bambi pose, ‘ribcage bragging’ is apparently the new Instagram trend
Ah, summer emaciation
It doesn’t even seem that long ago that tabloids were celebrating the “bambi pose” as the new body positive Instagram trend. It was supposed to be all you’re going to see on your TL this summer – girls celebrating thigh brows as they posed like tragic orphaned deers. But alas, nothing lasts forever. Time marches onwards. Now we’re in the era of “ribcage bragging” instead, supposedly.
Lauding it as the new thigh gap, the Daily Mail writes: A raft of models, singers and social media stars are also following this toxic trend which surely takes the cult of skinny to a worrying new low.”
I know, the Daily Mail caring about toxic influences on women, but suspend your disbelief for a moment. The “ribcage bragging” trend, to explain, involves Instagram pictures taken from above or the side while girls lie on their back, so gravity and the ability to hold their breath for long periods of time picks out the shape of their ribcage.
It can also be achieved by arching your back when you’re standing up and clenching slash praying for as long as possible, like so (yeah, Bella Hadid is a big fan evidently).
From a cynical perspective, you could say yeah “this is the Daily Mail identifying a trend so they have an excuse to post lots of pictures of A through D List celebrities semi-naked”, and yeah you could say that they had to scroll back hella far in almost every “example celebrity” Instagram to find these pics (Nicole Scherzinger’s is from nearly a year ago), but despite that, it is pretty horrible to look at.
It’s not that girls aren’t used to being bombarded with these type of images – everyone was infected by the concept of the thigh gap or the bikini bridge before ribcage bragging even had a name – but coming after France decided to ban unhealthy models in an attempt to promote a more inclusive and healthy body image, it’s discouraging to see the kind of glorified emaciated high fashion Vogue editorial poses we’re supposed to be moving away from turn up in social media instead. Well, more so than they already did before.
I miss the bambi, personally. That I could get on board with.