Simone de Beauvoir and the Cult of Thinness in 2026

Since The Second Sex, feminist analyses of Western beauty standards in women have highlighted three currents: 1) self-objectification; 2) the thinness ideal; 3) the role of media in perpetuating stringent aesthetic norms. These analyses often draw on Beauvoir’s ideas about feminine narcissism, according to which women are socialized into predicating their self-worth on their appearance. These ideas remain all too relevant, as the flourishing of trends like the recently banned #SkinnyTok, which encourage a repressive fixation on our bodies, reveals. However, the thinness norm within the “tradwife” movement suggests that we must look beyond The Second Sex’s “The Narcissist.” In 2026, a “good” Christian woman should be slender, but resorting to popular means to lose weight—like the cosmetic uses of GLP-1s—is frowned upon. Many “trad wives” view these as shortcuts. For them, dieting to shape one’s physique merges with religious dedication. Indeed, The Second Sex’s chapter on mysticism offers a better model for capturing the cult of thinness within this movement. Beauvoir’s mystic compensates for her feeling of insufficiency in a male-dominated world by devoting her life to God, just as the “trad wife” justifies her dieting in the name of a higher power.

Céline Leboeuf is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Affiliate Faculty in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Florida International University.