This Monday, like many other people in the Netherlands, I settled in front of my laptop after a long working day and tuned in to one of the most anticipated events on television this month. I am, of course, talking about the season finale of The Kardashians.

While most of the world has been glued in front of the screen watching football for the past week, I have spent a season watching Khloé getting cheated on and Kim hunting down the Marilyn Monroe Happy-Birthday-Mister-President-dress for the 2022 MET Gala.

Watching this show is an interesting case study in cultural anthropology. No other family in America – and probably the world – has had as much of a cultural impact as the Kardashians in recent history. And especially the Marilyn dress storyline caught my attention.

Not necessarily, as one might suspect, because of the question whether this dress should have been worn by someone other than Marilyn Monroe in the first place or whether or not it was damaged. No, I was interested because Kim Kardashian crash-dieted to fit into it.

After years of body positivity this and curvy bodies are more desirable that, we are returning to the crash dieting circle of diet culture. That fact is, well, concerning – to say the least. And not only that: this year has seen a revival of early-2000s fashion in combination with TikTok trends mimicking the mid-2010s on Tumblr – diet culture directed at teenagers included.

Earlier this month, Harper’s Bazaar declared in a headline: ‘McQueen Says Low-Rise Pants Are Really, Truly Back’ – and as far as I’m concerned, that’s really, truly the nail in the coffin. McQueen and Harper’s Bazaar can keep their stupid low-rise pants that fit approximately 5 per cent of the female population.

We’ve done this for long enough. Less than one-hundred years ago, people thought that taking amphetamines as diet pills would be a good idea. And I’m not interested in that trend returning, just as much as I’m not interested in returning to the low-rise jeans of the 2000s and the unhealthily skinny supermodels of the 1990s or the Tumblr diet culture of the 2010s

I don’t think anyone should crash-diet to fit into a dress, or generally feel the pressure to torture themselves for any fashion trend whatsoever. It’s tiring. Let me wear my high-rise pants in peace. Shopping for them is already hard enough, considering pants’ sizing was invented by the devil (probably wearing Prada).

But, alas, what can we do against the cultural machinery of the fashion industry? While I’m writing this, some are already speculating that Kim Kardashian has had her butt implants removed to slim down and we are already in the midst of the new trend. Jesus, take the wheel.

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