Thigh Gap Jewelry? Website Debates A Skinny Trend Gone Too Far
Perhaps you’ve heard of the thigh gap, as reported by The Inquisitr, or even the box gap. To the uninitiated, the thigh gap represents the space between thighs so thin that the thighs don’t touch, even when a person is standing with their feet together. The box gap represents the space a bit higher than the thighs, right beneath the crotch area, which can appear as a sort of heart-shaped space when the legs are placed together on people of certain body types. The thigh gap and box gap have become such controversial things that when E! created the “How to get that sexy thigh gap” video, it was removed due to backlash.
Hashtags on social media might promote eating disorders through disturbing labels like #skinny and other “secret society” labels, but they also promote recovery from eating disorders as well, as reported by The Inquisitr.
Therefore, when news about a website selling thigh gap jewelry emerged, it was quite a strange type of jewelry to think of a retailer selling. However, upon closer inspection, the story behind TGAP JEWELLERY reveals that it isn’t an actual retailer selling weird-looking jewelry to highlight thigh gaps. Instead, it’s a social experiment to talk about how the thigh gap is praised as something all women should strive to achieve, as reported by the Independent.
TGap Jewellery is a fictional company that sells jewelleries designed for thigh gaps. It is launched to catalyze a debate on unrealistic body image social media portrays.
As explained on the fake thigh-gap jewelry website, TGap Jewellery exists to confront the challenges that have emerged on social media that have represented disturbing trends — all ways that women, usually, can prove to one another how skinny they were.
The #CollarboneChallenge featured women putting coins or other small objects in their collarbone areas to prove they wouldn’t fall out, with the bones supporting the coins.
The #VisibleRibCage challenge oddly only has one post displayed on Instagram. The social media network has been known to remove harmful hashtags, or place warnings on labels they deem are disturbing.
The #PerkyButt challenge is similar to how it sounds, but also offers helpful fitness tips from folks using that label.
The #ThighGap label turns up nil on Instagram, so it must be one of those labels that went the way of #EggplantFriday — another label Instagram deemed too naughty or harmful to keep alive.
The #PlumpLips hashtag features nearly 40,000 images on Instagram, with Kylie Jenner showing up in lots of photos.
The #FlatBelly hashtag has more than 100,000 posts on Instagram.
The #BikiniBridge is a somewhat new label, featuring the space that can be made by the hipbones, when a bridge is created in a thin person’s bikini bottom.
The #ThighBrow was featured in a popular photo of Khloe Kardashian and Kendall Jenner, whereby when the two sat on their thighs, the folds made two “thigh brows” like “eyebrows.”
The #ThighBrow Joins #ThighGap And #FreshFacedFriday As Surging Instagram Tags
“There’s an increased trend in which girls and women are engaging in extreme dieting in pursuit of a so-called thigh gap” – Tania Heller, Medical Director of Washington Center for Eating Disorders and Adolescent Obesity in Bethesda
The #SlimLegs and #BigBreasts hashtags are pretty self-explanatory, and the #A4Waist challenge featured women in China trying to prove they were smaller than 12-inch sheets of paper.
It’s due to all these crazy challenges that the thigh gap jewelry website emerged, to bring attention to standards of beauty that can encourage eating disorders.
THIGH GAP: A trend popularized on social media that pressurizes women and girls to achieve a gap between their thighs when they stand with their feet touching
The top photo above from September 11, 2006, shows a super-thin runway model with a thigh gap. Fashion industry experts have been called to the carpet for their role in encouraging eating disorders — at least the ones that tell already thin women to lose more weight before they walk the runway.
The bone structure defines whether you can have a thigh gap: the shape of the pelvic girdle and distance between the hipbones. Most women have narrow hips that even with little fat on their legs, there is no gap between their thighs. – Angela Guarda, Director of Johns Hopkins Eating Disorders Program
‘How To Get That Sexy Thigh Gap Easily’ Video From ‘E! Online’ Backlash: Thigh Gap Video Removed
[AP Photo/Paul Hawthorne, File]
