This is weird and not good.
Erin, a 25-year-old from St. Louis, Mo., who asked that her last name not be used to protect her privacy, said that before she heard the term through social media, she remembers feeling pride when she saw a space between her thighs. “My legs didn’t touch, and that was cool,” she says. “I used to be able to wrap my hands all the way around my legs. And that was kind of like a trophy for me that I could do that. I just wanted my legs to be as small as possible.”
Experts fear that the focus on thigh gap is driving a small number of women, especially teens, into behavior that could lead to eating disorders and other destructive habits. “We have seen an increased trend in which adolescent girls and young women are engaging in extreme dieting in pursuit of a so-called thigh gap,” says Tania Heller, medical director of the Washington Center for Eating Disorders and Adolescent Obesity in Bethesda.
Our bigger problem is that people are eating too much and exercising too little (I know this is my problem), but I had never heard of “thigh-gap.” We seem to make things as miserable as possible for young girls. I’m reminded every time I go to the public pool how few women can measure up to society’s ideal for female beauty. It’s even worse when girls think they need to go further than that and be able to wrap their hands around their thighs.