Last year it was the "thigh gap," this year it's the "bikini bridge." In the latest thinspiration craze, women are uploading photos to social media sites proudly showing off the space between their bikini bottoms and hip bones, dubbed the bikini bridge.
Urban Dictionary described the trend as when "bikini bottoms are suspended between the two hip bones, causing a space between the bikini and the lower abdomen."
In the photos people can see the two hip bones protruding as women lie out on beaches. What some people might not know is that this alarming trend started off as hoax on the site 4Chan. According to E! News, anonymous users decided they wanted to create a new trend and see if it could go viral. It did go viral and now there are Instagram and Tumblr pages dedicated to the trend.
"After a fair amount of circulation has been accomplished, we circulate the images throughout parts of the Internet known to be biased on the subject of weight (i.e. thin privilege, fat shaming, etc)," an anonymous 4chan user wrote, Yahoo reports. "This should cause large enough of a stir to snowball into a fairly big subject."
Theanonymous 4Chan users created fake celebrity tweets, Buzzfeed lists and other propaganda all endorsing the trend. Reportedly even Harry Styles tweeted about the trend writing "Nothing hotter than girls with #bikinibridge" and included a picture, the Daily Mail reports. The tweet has since been deleted.
Louise Adams, a clinical psychologist who specializes in eating disorders and body image told The Sydney Morning Tribune that the bikini bridge is "just another example of the objectification of women and their bodies."
"Social media creates competiveness between other women," she said. "We know this largely effects younger women and this is exactly who is using these sites. This is a generation who has grown up with social media and at the same time, eating disorder figures have doubled."
