Trigger warning: This article discusses disordered eating in a way that some readers may find distressing.
By Michele Yeo
If you’ve spent any time at all on TikTok, you know the app constantly sees trends coming and going with various degrees of virality. For the most part it’s harmless: a certain dance, a popular lip sync, a trending sound or song, a cooking hack, or an innocent prank are just a few kinds of popular content to have invaded our For You pages and sometimes even gone mainstream. But lately, a new trend has emerged that has the potential to be more injurious than entertaining. And it doesn’t show any sign of slowing down or going away any time soon.
It’s called SkinnyTok and, as the name would suggest, it’s TikTok content that includes tips, tricks, advice, and methods on how to get – and stay – thin. But beyond nutritional and fitness advice, the trend has morphed into something more insidious that experts warn is becoming a gateway for disordered eating with the potential for even deadly consequences.
“SkinnyTok is essentially a subculture on TikTok that glorifies extreme thinness and often promotes disordered behaviors under the guise of ‘wellness,’ ‘health,’ or ‘discipline,’” says Abbey Sharp, a Registered Dietician who uses her popular YouTube channel, Instagram and TikTok pages, and podcast, Bite Back with Abbey Sharp, to debunk myths, call out charlatans, and dispel the monumental amounts of harmful misinformation that’s become part and parcel of the multi-billion dollar wellness industrial complex. She calls SkinnyTok “an algorithm-driven rabbit hole where users are served up video after video of unrealistic body ideals, ‘what I eat in a day’ clips featuring dangerously low-calorie intakes, and ‘thinspo’ images repackaged in pastel fonts and wellness hashtags. It’s toxic, it’s triggering.”
And of course, all this advice is coming from users who are not qualified to be dispensing any kind of health or wellness advice in the first place. Some of that advice, by the way, includes the following: “any meal you get, automatically make it two meals, ask for a to-go box when they bring you your plate at a restaurant,” or “eat small to be small” or “every time you’re eating, pretend like you’re sitting next to Bella Hadid. Pretty soon that salad is going to be looking really good,” or “Pretend like you have a pool party coming up this week and your ex will be there. Nothing will have you put down the fork faster. Cravings gone, steps hit.” Abbey Sharp says the trend unabashedly “glorifies hunger” One creator tells us that “hunger is not an emergency” while another advises us that, “if your stomach is grumbling, think of it as applause.” The vast majority of the advice is in the pursuit of being “hot” rather than being “healthy” with pearls of wisdom like, “being hot needs to be your priority. Food lasts for what, five seconds? Being hot lasts all day long.” or, “you’re never going to look back on your life and be like ‘wow, I’m so glad I ate those fries that day’ but you will look back on your life and think ‘wow, I was so hot.’” In addition to focusing more on appearance than anything else, the advice often takes a “tough love” approach. “SkinnyTok has a very militant ‘no pain no gain’ tough love approach,” says Abbey,” and it advocates for you to call yourself a fat pig and reinforce fatphobic beliefs to “motivate” you into losing weight.”
If this all sounds vaguely familiar, like a throwback to the toxic pro-anorexia Reddit culture of the ‘90s and early 2000s, to a time where we all collectively called Jessica Simpson and Britney Spears “fat,” that’s because the pendulum has indeed swung back this way. Abbey Sharp says there are two chief contributors to a regression to the “thin is in” mindset. One, she says, is the general public becoming fed up with influencers who aren’t honest and upfront about what truly goes into being fit and lean. “A lot of people have woken up to the performance of social media and feel gaslit by these messages that you don’t need to diet or restrict, and can eat massive smoothie bowls topped with hundreds of calories worth of toppings and still have a six pack. So the rise of SkinnyTok is a reflection of people seeking full honest transparency of what it truly takes to look like their favorite fitness influencer.” Another factor is the increased popularity and accessibility of weight loss drugs like Ozempic. “Thinness has long been a cultural value and status symbol,” Abbey says. “But with widespread access to weight loss injections like Ozempic, thinness becomes even more explicitly transactional. And that seems to threaten those who have built identity capital around achieving or maintaining thinness “the hard way”. The result is of course a moral counter-movement with its no pain no gain mantras like SkinnyTok.”
The message of skinny as a status symbol and the cultural currency of thinness is an essential part of SkinnyTok with one creator, Liv Schmidt, a self-described “Skinni Coach” telling followers, “you wonder why the bouncer is not letting you in? Check your stomach. You’re wondering why this restaurant or this job isn’t taking you, look at yourself. Being skinny is literally a status symbol, it’s a symbol of control.” After countless videos (including one proclaiming that tomatoes make you fat) TikTok eventually removed Liv from the platform but she continues to use Instagram (where she has 320K followers) and YouTube (where she has 92.5K subscribers) as her digital SkinnyTok soapbox. And while TikTok may have clamped down on Liv, she’s definitely the exception and not the rule.
Abbey Sharp thinks platforms like TikTok need to be more vigilant about the type of content getting uploaded and exposed to millions of people. “TikTok has made some moves – they’ve partnered with eating disorder organizations, added warning labels, and banned certain hashtags. But it’s like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound,” she says. “The algorithm still pushes this content hard. The language evolves faster than TikTok can keep up — “thinspo” becomes “that girl,” and eating disorder content hides behind “wellness.” And you can spell SkinnyTok a variety of other ways to find the people you want to reach.” While a disclaimer does come up on TikTok when you search “SkinnyTok” telling viewers “You are more than your weight” and offering resources for people struggling with food, Abbey says more can still be done. “TikTok isn’t just a dance app anymore,” she says, “it’s where young people go to learn, to form their identities, and to seek connection. When content that glamorizes eating disorders or punishes bodies becomes the norm, platforms have a responsibility to step in. This isn’t about censorship, it’s about harm reduction.”
Okay, so SkinnyTok is a thing but where’s the harm in it? After all, is there really anything wrong with encouraging people to eat less? Well, yes, says Abbey. “SkinnyTok is dangerous because it glamorizes and normalizes eating disorders and body dysmorphia, especially among young, vulnerable users,” she warns. “This content doesn’t just influence how people eat, it affects how they think about their bodies, their worth, and their health. Not to mention, it further perpetuates social fat phobia and weight stigma. It can push someone teetering on the edge of disordered eating right over the cliff. And thanks to the algorithm, once you engage with even one of these videos, TikTok floods your feed with more of the same – it’s a fast track to an unhealthy echo chamber.”
