TikTok is full of disturbing content, but something called SkinnyTok currently takes the cake for the hottest new trend — and potentially the most dangerous.
“SkinnyTok is essentially this whole genre of TikTok where these influencers, they call themselves ‘skinny influencers,’ are taking to TikTok to help other people get skinny. But I think what they’re promoting is kind of unhealthy,” Blaze Media social media coordinator Phoenix Painter tells Allie Beth Stuckey on “Relatable.”
“I don’t want to shame anyone, but I still feel like it’s important to draw a line as to what is healthy behavior and what seems to be more along the lines of obsession leading to disordered thoughts and patterns,” Painter adds.
One of these influencers, Liv Schmidt, is one of the more “infamous SkinnyTok influencers,” and she takes a harsh approach to her advice.
“A lot of you love to ask me what I eat in a day, and the second I tell you or even hint at it, it’s shock, it’s horror, it’s panic, like, ‘That’s barely any food.’ Yeah, no, what do you think I’m eating? A ton of donuts, pizza, and McDonald’s every day? Babe, be serious, be so for real. I don’t eat like that because I don’t want to look like that,” Schmidt said in a video while walking on a treadmill.
“I eat in portions. I eat with intention. If I ate like garbage, I would feel like garbage and I wouldn’t look the way I do. I chose to be skinny, I chose to be disciplined, and if that makes you uncomfortable, that’s not my problem,” she added.
“Eating disorders are competitive,” Painter says, commenting on Schmidt’s online persona. “Liv Schmidt, she says all the time, ‘Eat small, be small,’ or she also says, ‘You’re not a dog; don’t reward yourself with food.’”
“Which I feel like is so telling of where her mindset actually is,” she adds.
Stuckey, who also dealt with disordered eating in her college years, is all too familiar with this mindset.
“I had a friend who recommended a book in college, and it was called ‘The Skinny Girl Method.’ And it was literally like, ‘Never eat a full banana, just eat half of it, and then put it away,’” Stuckey recalls.
And in the earlier 2000s, when Stuckey was in college, this skinny-girl phenomenon was the norm. Now, it’s clearly making a resurgence on the back of the “body positivity movement.”
“The only thing that I really feel like the body positivity movement got right was that we shouldn’t be shaming people for how they look. Like that kind of early 2000s tabloid thing where they would blow up images of celebrities literally just trying to have a vacation and be like, ‘Oh my God, look at her cellulite, she’s gained five pounds,’” Painter tells Stuckey.
“The body positivity movement absolutely hit it on the nose when they said, ‘No, we shouldn’t be doing that,’ and this is kind of reverting back to that mindset, like ’90s, early 2000s,” she adds.
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