Content Warning: The following article discusses weight loss drugs, eating disorders, illness and death. Those struggling with disordered eating can reach out to the free National Eating Disorder helpline at 1-866-662-1235.
At the risk of sounding like the professor of a 1000-level poetry class, this week’s article will start with a visualization exercise. I’m going to describe a woman, and you’re going to come up with a picture of her in your head.
This is a young woman. She has pale skin, bright eyes, flushed cheeks and a thin physique. Maybe you’re picturing a favorite actress or model, or someone who looks ready to roam the streets of LA.
The woman I’m describing is not a celebrity figure. She isn’t ready to roam the streets of LA or New York or anywhere else, for that matter, because she’s on her deathbed succumbing to tuberculosis in the year 1882.
Tuberculosis, aka consumption, is a contagious, infectious disease that has plagued humanity for over 70,000 years. In 12th century England and France, it was known as “the king’s evil.” In 18th century England, tuberculosis earned the moniker of “the white plague,” a reference to the sickly pallor of its victims. During Europe’s Romantic period, though, tuberculosis chic became an ideal.
Suffering from tuberculosis was seen as a beautifully tragic way for a young, upper-class woman to die. Many influential Romantic artists, from the Brontë family to Frederick Chopin, died of tuberculosis; it was used in literature as a metaphor for artistic endeavors paralleling the Industrial Revolution. Tuberculosis victims in media exemplified beauty in ephemerality — essentially, they were the predecessors to today’s tragic manic pixie dream girls.
To emulate the state of tuberculosis victims, Romantic women donned tightly laced, pointed corsets to mimic wasting away and caked their faces with (often poisonous) makeup to mimic a pale complexion and flushed lips and cheeks. In the great year 2026, we’re still seeing the ramifications of tuberculosis-induced beauty standards. Instead of corsets and poisonous makeup, women are now encouraged to take up weight-loss drugs and subscribe to the startling normalization of eating disorder culture.
I’ve referred to the “Ozempic epidemic” in previous editions of this column, and I mean that quite literally. The glorification of extreme thinness to the point of disfunction is not only descended from an epidemic, it’s also perpetuating a new epidemic. By promoting extreme thinness, we are idealizing and manufacturing an impression of illness. The prevalence of young women ascribing to look like literal corpses should be a wake-up call.
Tuberculosis, like most diseases, kills regardless of gender. So, why (putting the feminist theme of this column aside), have we focused primarily on women?
The draw of tuberculosis-chic is closely associated with feminine beauty in particular. Tuberculosis only became fashionable when it struck young women of the upper class, who could afford to lie in bed and take visitors who’d comment on how tragic they looked. Consumption wasn’t romanticized in men, who were expected to be strong, or women of the lower class who needed strength to work. Tuberculosis is only a fitting ideal for people who aren’t expected to take up space or do much of anything at all.
Sound familiar?
Flash forward to today, with the beauty standard spectrum existing somewhere between hulking looksmaxxer and Ozempic-chic. Masculine beauty standards tend towards athleticism, building men up, while feminine beauty standards are minimizing. Women aren’t merely expected to take up less physical space; we’re also encouraged to emulate a state of near-death and physical weakness. Although most women aren’t going out of their way to contract tuberculosis for looks, the path to imitating a near-death state still kills. Anorexia affects 15% of women and has the highest case mortality rate of any mental illness. Even for those who don’t die from eating disorders, symptoms include fainting, brain fog and potential long-term organ failure.
In addition to impacting Western beauty standards, millions of women still suffer from tuberculosis directly. TB remains the leading cause of infection-related death globally, killing 1.3 million people in 2024 according to the World Health Organization. Why is it so common to slowly self-destruct in mimesis of a disease that kills thousands of women every year?
I love the Romantic era for its literature as much as the next insufferable English major, but there should be no excuse for societal encouragement of slow self-destruction in accordance with unrealistic, outdated beauty standards. Next time you feel yourself succumbing to the incessant pressure to look perfect, take a step back and be grateful you’re not succumbing to consumption instead.