Fashion trends are supposed to change. That’s the whole point of fashion. One year oversized jackets are everywhere. The next they’re replaced by tailored silhouettes. Colours change. Hairstyles change. Shoes change. That’s normal.

What has never stopped feeling strange to me is that, somewhere along the way, we started treating human bodies the same way.

For a while, the ideal body was soft and curvy. Then it had to be almost childlike, with no visible curves at all. Later it became athletic. Then impossibly thin. Then we were told we should have tiny waists and exaggerated hips. Now the trend seems to be shifting once again. Every decade brings a new “perfect body”, while the previous one quietly becomes outdated.

Imagine applying that logic to any other part of your life. Imagine someone telling you that your eye colour is fashionable this year but probably won’t be next season. It sounds absurd. And yet that’s exactly what we’ve accepted when it comes to our bodies.

The strangest part isn’t that beauty standards change. Beauty standards have always changed. The strangest part is that we’ve started treating human bodies as if they were part of the wardrobe. As if they were another item of clothing that could simply be replaced every season.

But our bodies aren’t clothes. We don’t get to exchange them because fashion magazines have decided that this year’s silhouette is different from last year’s.

The consequences of that way of thinking are everywhere. Entire industries are built around convincing us that our bodies have somehow expired. Every spring the message quietly returns. You have a few weeks left. Lose weight. Tone up. Fix yourself. Become “summer ready.”

It’s brilliant marketing, really. Because it’s much easier to sell a solution to someone who believes they’re the problem. The more insecure we feel, the more products become necessary. Creams. Supplements. Workout plans. Cosmetic procedures. Miracle diets. There will always be another thing to buy if we’re convinced our body is always one trend behind.

But here’s the question that keeps coming back to me. If the ideal body changes every ten years, how can yours be objectively wrong? The exact same body that was criticised twenty years ago might be celebrated today. And the body people admire today may become tomorrow’s mistake.

That tells me something important. Maybe our bodies were never the problem. Maybe the standard was. Maybe we’ve spent decades trying to adapt living, breathing human beings to something that was always designed to be temporary.

Fashion is temporary. Bodies aren’t.

Our body isn’t an unfinished project waiting for society’s approval. It’s the only place we’ll ever truly live. Maybe we’ve been looking at it through the wrong lens all along. Not as a home, but as another outfit that needs replacing every season.

If fashion is meant to reinvent itself every season, why have we accepted the idea that our bodies should do the same?