Looking like a skeleton is no longer just for Halloween; it’s the latest Hollywood trend on the fast track to becoming a beauty standard.

As award seasons and fashion week converged, shockingly skeletal women were walking the red carpet and sashaying down runways.

You could spot Ozempified actresses on the red carpet sporting collarbones and sternum like another accessory from Van Cleef and Arpels. We are watching the glamorization of malnourishment.

Tone Deaf

The red carpet trend that has nothing to do with clothes

The media is completely tone deaf when it recently declared Demi Moore’s emaciated arms as “toned.” What message are they sending? These arms are not “toned,” they are skeletal and anorexic.

Make no bones about it; this trend towards skeletal beauty is dangerous.

I should know. I was once anorexic.

A Bone of Contention

For decades, I was obsessed with my bones, keeping a mental checklist.

Clavicle, collar bones clear and visible; Sternums up front and at attention. Hip bones that needed to protrude sharply, distinctly lying down, and ribs that could be easily felt.

I checked and rechecked the condition of my bones.

Truth is, I still do. Ironically, despite all the attention I gave to my bones, they still ended up saddled with osteoporosis, the one thing I could not control.

As bodies disappear, the expectation that has plagued me for decades has not disappeared.

The Disappearing Body Positivity Movement

After a decade of body positivity, the pendulum is swinging back. Bodies are shrinking again.  The body positivity movement ended the second thinness became injectable.

With the introduction of weight loss drugs like Ozempic, the standard is back to thinness in a way never seen before – the ideal isn’t just skinny, it’s skeletal. And the message is trickling down to everyday women, comparing themselves to bodies that are sculpted and molded by the pharmaceutical industry.

Rather than attempting to reach a healthy body weight, the Ozempic era appears to be more of a competition to see who can get closest to emaciation.

This is the mindset of someone with an eating disorder. Women are being shepherded into anorexia by GLP-1’s.

I achieved this the old-fashioned way, without drugs.

Just a debilitating disease called Anorexia Nervosa.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2026. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.