The moment, Ashley Graham said, was ‘beyond epic.’ The plus-size model had been chosen by Sports Illustrated as their 2016 swimsuit issue cover girl – an unprecedented move that, Graham recalled, editors swore would ‘make history.’
Fast forward almost a decade and those celebrations seem premature.
Because the so-called body positivity movement has been consigned to history. In its place, a return to the cult of ultra thinness.
Once known as ‘heroin chic,’ today it might be more accurately described as ‘Ozempic chic.’
It’s the diet wonder drug and its rivals that have permitted previously proud ambassadors for ‘self-love’ to shrink to shadows of their former selves, while social media is now awash with extreme diet tips that fall under the rather crude umbrella of ‘Skinnytok.’
One such ‘Skinnytok’ provocateur is influencer and model Liv Schmidt. Her dieting doctrine has reportedly fostered a community of young women who celebrate how little they eat in one day and discuss strategies to cope with feeling dizzy or light-headed – clear signs of disordered eating.
While she has been banned from TikTok since late last year and barred from monetizing content on Meta platforms as of Friday, her posts – which she insists are ’empowering women to reclaim their lives, their routine, and their confidence’ – continue to proliferate online, alarming health experts and parents.
‘Skinnytok glamorizes and normalizes disordered eating and body dysmorphia, especially among young, vulnerable viewers,’ said Abbey Sharp, a registered dietitian and the founder of Abbey’s Kitchen, who works to counter harmful social media trends via her foodie podcast, Bite Back.
One such ‘Skinnytok’ provocateur is influencer and model Liv Schmidt, whose dieting doctrine has reportedly fostered a community of young women who celebrate how little they eat in one day and discuss strategies to cope with the aftereffects.
Before being banned on TikTok, she would share her daily diet on the app.
Her content has been met with fierce backlash, while her devout followers applaud her lifestyle.
‘This content doesn’t just influence how people eat; it affects how they think about their bodies, their worth and their health.
‘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 that can have dire consequences.’
The business of thinness is a lucrative industry. Schmidt, who has 322,000 followers on Instagram and had more than 600,000 on TikTok prior to being banned, reportedly earns $130,000 per month from her 6,000 paying club members.
She is currently advertising a $2,900 online course for those wanting ‘access to the Skinni Société Secrets,’ describing it as ‘a private, NDA-bound vault for women who are done spiraling, done guessing, and done sharing their goals with people who don’t have any.’
Her publicly available content gives viewers a glimpse of what could be behind her paywall.
‘The next time you hear that little voice in your head saying I don’t want to waste food: girl, you’re not the garbage disposal,’ Schmidt, 23, says in one video.
In another, viewed by 1.4 million at time of writing, she preaches the importance of eating only three bites of food, ‘The first bite is pure enjoyment; second, savor the moment. The third is the grand finale. Done, put the fork down.’
Critics say such messaging is dangerous.
‘It’s not just promoting weight loss, but perpetuating some pretty harmful behaviors,’ said Mallary Tenore Tarpley, a University of Texas at Austin journalism professor and author of the forthcoming book SLIP: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery.
‘People on her forum talk about taping their mouths shut, keeping the kitchen closed, and all these mantras.’
Eating disorders, Sharp said, are ‘deadly.’ In fact, anorexia – which affects nearly 30 million Americans – has the highest case mortality rate of any mental illness, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders.
Schmidt currently advertising a $2,900 online course for those wanting ‘access to the Skinni Société Secrets,’ describing it as ‘a private, NDA-bound vault for women who are done spiraling, done guessing, and done sharing their goals with people who don’t have any.’
In one clip, Schmidt preaches the importance of eating only three bites of food, ‘The first bite is pure enjoyment; second, savor the moment. The third is the grand finale. Done, put the fork down.’
When attention was drawn to Schmidt’s content in an article in New York Magazine’s ‘The Cut,’ last week, Meta – the parent company of Facebook and Instagram – banned her from earning income on its platforms and restricted her page to be visible only to users over the age of 18, a spokesperson confirmed on X.
Schmidt accused the company of being unfair and claimed to be at risk of losing her livelihood as a result.
‘The most disturbing part? Meta didn’t even come to me. Despite countless support tickets, messages, and outreach attempts, no one was willing to speak with me directly. I was met with silence,’ she wrote on Instagram.
‘And meanwhile, one person with a vendetta was able to spin a false narrative that cost me my business.’
She added: ‘Anyone at Meta can look at my page and see the truth. There are thousands of testimonials. It’s an adult women’s community – I even have it written in the rules: no one under 18.
‘This person spreading lies didn’t just try to hurt me – they successfully manipulated your system. And no one stepped in to ask a single question.’
But experts say the extreme diet advice lurking on social media is a symptom of a larger problem.
Where illicit drug use was once glamorized to achieve rail thin frames, weight loss jabs and unhealthy wellness crazes are now the new norm – and perpetuating a new era of body image ideals.
Catwalks around the world are no longer as size inclusive as they were for that brief moment in the mid and late 2010s.
In its most recent size inclusivity report, Vogue Business found that, in the fall/winter fashion shows, only two percent of models were considered mid-size, and 0.3 percent were plus size.
Last season, the database Tagwalk recorded a 16 percent decrease in fashion houses that included at least one ‘curve’ model compared to the season before.
Hollywood starlets are also shrinking, as Australian actress Rebel Wilson, ‘90210’ star Tori Spelling and Oprah Winfrey have all admitted to using injectables to shed pounds. Singer Meghan Trainor, a former champion of curvy women, now also boasts a dramatically slimmer frame, by using Ozempic alternative, Mounjaro.
Meanwhile, A-listers such as Khloe Kardashian, Christina Aguilera and Lizzo have sparked speculation that they, too, are taking weight loss drugs, but they have denied it.
Meghan Trainor admitted to using the Ozempic alternative Mounjaro to lose weight.
Oprah Winfrey has confirmed she uses weight loss medications to achieve her figure.
Rebel Wilson disclosed her Ozempic use during her weight loss journey.
‘Diet culture of the 90s and 2000s was replaced with wellness culture which focused on clean eating, detoxes and fears about countless foods under the guise of “health,”‘ said Sharp.
‘Wellness culture also co-opted a lot of the messages of body positivity and intuitive eating as part of its “performance,” which ultimately led people to feel gaslit that they should be able to achieve the golden life trifecta of eating whatever they want, loving their body and still having visible abs.’
‘Skinnytok,’ then, appeals to the masses because it offers tangible tips – albeit ‘hyper-restrictive’ – to achieve the figure they want.
But that’s just one piece of the puzzle.
‘The second trigger was weight loss drugs like Ozempic and the commodification of thinness,’ Sharp continued.
‘When you can essentially buy your way to a thinner body, it threatens those who have built identity capital and earned moral value around achieving or maintaining thinness the “hard way.” The result is of course a moral countermovement like Skinnytok to reclaim moral superiority.’
It’s unrealistic to expect diet culture and worshiping of thinness to disappear entirely, said Tarpley, but as a mother to a 7-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter, she hopes this encourages discussions between parents and their kids.
‘We do need to have conversations about eating disorders. We shy away, thinking we don’t want to plant ideas, but can end up ignoring warning signs. This gives us an opportunity, for better or worse, to be proactive about it and get ahead of it,’ she said.
‘I tell my kids all bodies are worthy of respect, and I don’t put moral weight on food, saying foods are good or bad.’
Tarpley said she hopes the pendulum will swing back to ‘body neutrality,’ which she said was ‘the idea that the body is not an ornament but an instrument.’
‘Not everyone will love their bodies or feel positive about them; we’ll always feel like we’re falling short,’ she said. ‘But if we can find someplace in the middle, I think that’s a good place to be.’
