During the transitionary period of college, students are more vulnerable to body image insecurities and unhealthy eating habits, which have become larger trends alongside weight loss and dieting drugs.
The U.S. popularization of young adults using Ozempic and other drugs for weight loss is connected to new trends of extreme thinness and unhealthy eating habits across social media and in Hollywood. These trends can seep into everyday people’s lives, including vulnerable young communities like college students.
Savannah Roberts, a PhD candidate in clinical and developmental psychology, has conducted research on the way adolescents develop body dissatisfaction and eating disorders. Roberts said, broadly, body image concerns begin when people see a “cultural appearance standard” and don’t see themselves fitting into that standard.
“We develop this discrepancy between what we think we look like and what we wish we looked like,” Roberts said. “Society for a very long time has been a weight-stigmatizing environment where we’ve equated being in a larger body with being a bad thing. And so for a long time, folks have been focused on weight loss and thinness.”
The focus on weight loss in the United States has shifted over the past decades, with the “heroin chic” ideal becoming popular in the 1990s to emulate the skinny body size achieved through drug usage. In the 2010s, the body positivity movement grew, which focused on accepting all bodies and sizes.
Roberts said current trends seem to put a focus back on being thin and fit. This trend is often perpetuated in mainstream media by influencers who promote unrealistic lifestyles and edit photos of their bodies, making a profit for the weight loss and beauty industries.
“By shifting what the appearance standards look like, corporations and folks who are developing products are able to introduce new things that can make money by saying, ‘here’s a problem you didn’t even know you had, and you need to buy this thing or do this thing to address this problem,’” Roberts said.
Roberts said when she was young, the beauty industry heavily promoted a thigh gap associated with thinness. In recent years, plastic surgeries like the Brazilian butt lift have been promoted by celebrities such as the Kardashians. Now, some have noticed the Kardashians stopped getting body filler, falling in line with the return of slim body trends.
“Ultimately, by shifting what the appearance standard looks like all of the time, it keeps it unattainable,” Roberts said.
Claire Visscher, a dietitian nutritionist graduate student with a specialty in eating disorders, said students in college can be more susceptible to developing unhealthy eating habits or eating disorders. Eating disorders can have a variety of symptoms depending on the type, but all include an unhealthy relationship with food, which could mean restrictive eating, binging, purging or another habit.
“College is a pretty common time for eating disorders to develop,” Visscher said. “Any kind of big transition period can increase the risk of an eating disorder. It’s not the only time, but it is really common.”
The “freshman 15” is a common phrase used by college students to describe the typically unwanted weight gain that might occur during the first year of college. Visscher said this unfounded idea contributes to unhealthy feelings about weight, especially since most first-years come into college at around 18, which is an age when their bodies are still growing.
“A lot of people say, ‘Oh no, you don’t want to gain weight in college,’ when in reality, that is part of the normal growth curve,” Visscher said. “[For] anyone who is concerned about starting college and gaining weight, that is completely normal. Our bodies are still developing.”
GLP-1s, such as Ozempic, were originally used for type 2 diabetes to lower blood sugar levels, but the drugs also have a side effect of weight loss. Visscher said the popularized usage of these drugs is encouraging unhealthy weight loss.
“It’s bringing weight loss even more into the mainstream than it already was,” Visscher said. “There has always been a focus on weight loss, but with these drugs, it is becoming more accessible.”
Roberts said the college transition period can also be dangerous for negative body images to come about because it is a time of bodily change.
“You’re leaving that adolescent window and joining young adulthood,” Roberts said, “and if you’re only seeing other young people who are really thin because they’re on those medications, it has the potential to make you expect that you should be thinner too or that weight loss should be a goal for you.”
Danielle Miller, a senior nutrition science and dietetics major, is the director of events for Girl Gains at Pitt, a weightlifting club that focuses on female empowerment on campus. Miller said she has seen firsthand the pressures put on college students to look a certain way.
“In the college environment, there’s definitely a lot of self-comparison. There’s a lot of going online and saying, ‘why don’t I look that way?’ or ‘how can I get to look that way?’” Miller said, “and, unfortunately, most of the time what we’re comparing is the thinnest versions of ourselves.”
Miller said if a person finds themselves struggling with their body image or unhealthy eating habits, they should reach out to people they trust.
“First and foremost, find a community that is supportive of you, no matter how you look or how you might be feeling,” Miller said. “Second, I would speak with a health care provider, whether that’s a therapist or a registered dietitian. Find somebody that you feel safe talking with.”
Roberts said that trying to curate your social media algorithms away from focusing on bodies and towards your values can be an important step in staying healthy, both in mind and body.
“Use social media as a way to connect with other people and other communities that are more values-aligned rather than looks and appearance-aligned,” Roberts said. “Derive your self worth from the things that really matter, not from what you look like.”