Twenty-five years later, thin is still in with the fashion industry.

That is the takeaway from new research that studied a quarter-century worth of runway images, advertising, magazine covers, and editorial spreads. Mining nearly 800,000 images, a team of five researchers in Europe and the U.S. determined that ultra-lean physiques remain the beauty ideal. That was particularly evident at the high-end of fashion with thinness being “over represented” at the top-tier, according to the “Cultural Evolution of Human Beauty Standards” study.

There were also signals of advancement in diversity, but that was driven in some cases by the inclusion of plus-size models. Non-white models were 4.5 times more likely to be plus-size, which led researchers to speculate that “the industry consolidates multiple markers of diversity onto already underrepresented individuals rather than broadening inclusivity structurally. 

The team examined images of approximately 15,000 models via Models.com and The Fashion Model Directory over 18 months, according to one of the researchers, Louie Bodier. Artificial intelligence was only used as a research tool on a limited basis, partially due to FairFace’s flaws in favoring Caucasian people, he said.

Despite those challenges, Bodier said, “the most important thing is that diversity has increased since 2000. There is a wider range of body types, hair colors and eye colors.”

However, that shift is not indicative of sweeping change but due to the introduction of a few plus-size models, which was disproportionate to the U.S. population. In addition, what the fashion industry deems as the opening range of plus-size — a size 12 — is smaller than the average American woman, who is 5 foot, 3 inches, weighs 171.8 lbs. and has a waistline of 38.5 inches, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The average American male is 5 feet, 8.9 inches, weighs 199 lbs. and has a 48.6 waistline.

Calvin Klein’s “All Together” series, H&M’s support of local Pride parades, Aerie’s body positivity #AerieREAL initiative and Skims‘ “Celebrating Every Body” ads are examples of how fashion brands that have embraced diversity through campaigns and casting in recent years. In addition, Dove, Fenty, Gymshark, NYX Cosmetics, Self Glow and Skims were among the companies that were honored with 2024 Ethnicity Awards, which celebrate organizations and individuals that support Black, Asian and other communities of color.

Suggesting that the media and fashion industries promote extremely thin female bodies and lean, muscular male physiques, the researchers concluded that has normalized unsafe body sizes. In turn, people may not feel as though they measure up to models, which can lead to psychological distress and eating disorders across genders and age groups, they said. Forty-six percent of teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17 said they feel worse about their bodies, due to social media, and those who spend more than three hours a day on social media are twice as likely to develop an eating disorder, according to research in the Scandinavian Journal of Public Health.

Published last month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the paper tracked how models’ body size has evolved over time, across regions and within segments of the fashion industry. The primary focus of the research is on female models.

Acknowledging how progress is being made with diversity, Bodier said that is being done with “the least amount of effort,” as opposed to changing the infrastructure. While the elite brands have more plus-size models than the rest of the industry, they also have more ultra-thin models than the rest of the industry, Bodier said.

Aware that there has been a lot of discussion in the past year about diversity increasing in the fashion industry, the researchers are waiting for the data to be released in order to examine those claims. The widespread acceptance of Ozempic, Mounjaro, Ro and other weight loss drugs is also of interest to the team of independent academic researchers, who are not affiliated with any companies.

Body measurements for height, waist, hips and Relative Fat Mass, an index that estimates body fat percentage from height, waist circumference and gender, have remained stable. That index is considered to be more accurate than the Body Mass Index, which is only based on weight and height. “It’s a bit tricky, because the fashion industry does not report models’ body weight,” said Bodier, a researcher at the Technical University of Denmark.

Looking ahead, he said that policies related to models could enact change, such as Milan Fashion Week’s mandate of a Body Mass Index minimum for models of 18.5. The average BMI for an Italian woman is 24.8, which is within the normal weight category of 18.5 to 25.0, according to research provided by Springer Nature. The average BMI of an American woman is between 29.6 and 29.8. Referring to the Milan Fashion Week initiative, he said, “We could see that the diversity of models really changed after that.”

In contrast, he claimed that France’s 2017 law requiring models to have a medical certificate from a physician to prove they were in good health to work was less effective. “We found that having a high threshold like they did in Milan, was more effective. It’s better to have tough guidelines,” Bodier said.