5 May 2014
I was fairly surprised, not just that I’d been heckled, but at the content of the comment: “Nice thigh gap, love!” was what he yelled.
I had absolutely no idea what that meant. I wasn’t even clear whether it was a compliment or an insult. Nice thigh gap? When I got home I looked it up, and here’s what I found out.
A “thigh gap” is the space between your inner thighs, when you stand up straight, with your knees touching. It is supposedly a good thing. According to some of the blogs and twitter accounts that I’ve read since, it is not just a good thing but is an indication of the “perfect” body shape. Whatever the hell that is supposed to mean. It was started by a Victoria’s Secret Fashion show in 2012 when lots of very tall, thin, toned models had a “thigh gap”. A sort of mass lunacy occurred shortly afterwards, and commentary appeared across social media and magazines suggesting that this was the “ideal” shape to aspire to.
If you can’t get the desired gap through diet and exercise, then that probably means that your legs just don’t naturally have that shape. But such is the force of this trend that you can now have cosmetic surgery to alter the shape of your legs and acquire the gap, if you can’t achieve it any other way. Apparently it involves a new form of liposuction and a laser but I’m quite squeamish so I didn’t read much past that.
I’m also too depressed to research it any more. I had just about got my head around the idea that boobs must be hitched, stomachs flattened, bottoms rounded and lips plumped. And now we must ensure that we have the right sort of gap between our legs? What’s coming next? A desirable chin shape? The perfect toe length? The ideal elbow?
I stood in front of the mirror with my legs as close together as possible to see if I did indeed have this “gap”. It wasn’t entirely successful, since my ankle bones stick out and my legs are slightly bandy, so I couldn’t actually get my knees to touch without cocking one leg and forcing them together.
