Recently on social media, millennial women have been reflecting on all the blatant examples of diet culture that were simply accepted as “normal” while they were growing up. They bring to light the magazine covers picking apart female celebrities’ bodies, point out the way food and drinks were marketed to us, and share the types of comments they received from real people in their lives.
In so many ways, we’re doing better today. Now, we finally have some understanding of how badly we need to confront diet culture and stop commenting on people’s bodies. We’re finally beginning to understand that health and body size aren’t directly linked, that all bodies are good bodies. We’re getting somewhere.
But we’re not there yet — not even close. And the most recent example of how deeply we need to reevaluate our stances on body types can be found right on TikTok.
See: The trending term 'septum arms,' making waves on TikTok
The term itself doesn’t give too much information, but the meaning behind it speaks volumes. ‘Septum arms’ mean “except ‘em arms," and it’s being used to describe someone who is “cute — ’cept ‘em arms." Think of it as the new take on the (also very problematic) trend of calling women “butterfaces” to signify that someone is good-looking “but her face."
Yikes. It’s hard to believe that we’re still talking about bodies in this way. And while unlike its predecessor “butterface” (which clearly says “but her face” to make it clear we’re talking about women in particular), “septum arms” is slightly more gender-neutral. But, let’s be real here: We have never, and probably will never, speak about male bodies in such a gross, destructive way. This is just another example of our societal fixation with how women’s bodies look, which we obsess over while also neglecting the realities of those bodies.
The way we talk about women’s bodies may seem like a purely superficial issue, but it’s not. There are the more obvious effects — like, for example, the way terms like this will make us feel pressured to conform to this very specific ideal, and the way that inevitably leads to disordered eating patterns and mental health struggles among women. But there are more subtle effects too: Like the way our endless commentary on the way women’s bodies look forces us to tie the value of those bodies to the way they look, rather than how they function. Women’s health conditions are notoriously under-researched and underfunded. We’ve been screaming for more attention to be given to these issues so women can stop suffering, get diagnosed, and get treated for the things that ail them — yet the focus remains on the ways those bodies look.
TikTok has a lot of videos featuring women sharing that they “have septum arms," which is disheartening to see — clearly, this trend is getting under people’s skin. At the same time, maybe if enough people share looks at their own arms, we’ll begin to realize what arms actually look like — in our world of strategic poses and highly edited images, the only shred of good that can potentially come from this ridiculous term may be a reclamation of that unrealistic standard and a new norm in place.
But that’s not all we see where “septum arms” content is concerned. We are also, reassuringly, seeing a lot of content criticizing the trend. In one video, for example, a creator shares several looks at her own arm, saying “And it also spreads when you put it on your body, because that’s what happens when you have literally a limb…stop making women feel bad about themselves.”
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Another TikTok creator has added his own commentary to this video, saying “It is just ridiculous to me that the society we live in today will take completely normal things about a woman’s body and make it into an “imperfection” — such as cellulite, such as “septum arms”, having “a thigh gap”, not having a “thigh gap”...literally, no matter what they do, they are never enough.”
Amen to that. The bad news? We’re still fighting an uphill battle where judging the way women’s bodies look is concerned. The good news? Progress is happening: Think about that old “butterface” terminology. People used to throw that term around, yet few people stopped to really think about how messed up it really was. Now, we live in a world where a term like “septum arms” can make its way into our cultural lexicon — but not without pushback.
Zara Hanawalt is a freelance journalist and mom of twins. She's written for outlets like Parents, MarieClaire, Elle, Cosmopolitan, Motherly, and many others. In her (admittedly limited!) free time, she enjoys cooking, reading, trying new restaurants, and traveling with her family.