I spent the turn of the century in college, and I’m now in the wildly entertaining position of seeing the outfits I wore on the steps of the Delta Zeta sorority house being recycled by women who are now college-age themselves. Indeed, the air has been thick with Y2K nostalgia lately. But as we celebrate the zig-zag headband-bridge between generations, let us not forget that the late ’90s and early 2000s were a time bedeviled by mainstream media that giddily criticized size-six celebrities for getting “bigger than ever.” It was an appalling practice that, thankfully, has become de-normalized.
It was in this era that we met Adriana Lima, who became a Victoria’s Secret Angel in 2000. The Brazilian model’s gorgeousness helped sell countless bras, her beauty not only meeting the highest of prevailing standards but arguably moving the goalpost in an even harder-to-reach direction. And, inconceivably, it seems, she has since aged and done human life-living things like the rest of us who exist within the same space-time realm. She had babies, maybe a cosmetic procedure or two—and she had the audacity to continue existing in public not looking exactly like she did prior to those typical life events.
In 2023, major media outlets largely left the fault-finding in Lima’s somewhat different appearance to individuals on social media, who were unfortunately more than happy to jeer at what they deemed a tragically overweight fallen angel with a “new face” (derogatory), all the while ignoring that she was still easily embodying conventional beauty standards. While there was some coverage of how the internet was reacting to her appearance, there was very little chastisement coming from publications themselves; instead, these publications patiently waited to praise her eventual return to a more familiar Lima look, as if pouncing out from behind a couch at a surprise party, shouting, “Glow-up!”
“Anyone Who Thinks Your 40s Are Too Late for a Fresh Start Hasn’t Seen Adriana Lima’s Glow-Up,” reads the headline of a women.com article. “At 45, Adriana Lima’s Stunning Makeover Marks a New Era for the Supermodel,” said Vogue Arabia.
This celebratory tone feels way friendlier than how the media used to talk about celebrity weight, but it’s just as problematic. [Editor’s note: While Allure never called indisputably thin celebrities fat, we can own up to having promoted skinniness and diet culture back in the day.] By framing Lima’s perceived return to top-tier beauty as something to be exalted, it automatically suggests that the way she looked for a little while was deserving of censure. And the idea that this is somehow a glow-up or a stunning makeover ignores the fact that, even when puffier and allegedly pulled, she was still Adriana-fucking-Lima. When the glow-up “before” is still a real-world 10, we have lost our filter-rotted minds.
