Should We Throw a Party? Should We Invite Bella Hadid.
The internet's obsession with thinness is back and badder than ever.
TW: Discussion of EDs and ED culture on the internet in the 2010s and now.
On September 15 2021 twitter (now X) user helena (@freshhel) posted what would become one of the most iconic tweets of the early 2020s.
It is now often used as a way to tell someone you couldn’t care less about what they are saying but it was such a great analysis of diet culture, especially at a time when it seemed like we were moving further towards body acceptance and neutrality. A way to point out that someone was being a little ridiculous about their eating habits. As someone who had previously suffered from disordered eating and was working on her relationship to food it definitely made me laugh, and was also something I would say to myself when I felt myself slipping into old habits. It would appear though, that in recent years we have slipped back into old patterns and as someone who grew up on pro-ana Tumblr I cannot help but notice the scary resemblance between that space and what has recently been coined as “skinnytok.”
It was 2014, I was in the height of my Tumblr usage when I stumbled across a blog that shared pictures of thin women and tips on how to lose a bunch of weight, it was called “thinspiration” or “#thinspo” and it didn’t take long for me to become hooked, I would spend every day on these blogs, looking at pictures of beautiful, thin, happy looking women, usually Victoria's Secret models. I became obsessed with their diets, their exercise routines, ways that I could become exactly like them, girls would share tips on how they had managed to lose weight, foods you could swap out, ways to make sure you were eating in a massive calorie deficit to ensure you lost weight as quickly as possible. I took it all in, followed all the tips, had pictures of these women stuck on my mirror alongside quotes that said “sweat is just fat crying” or the classic “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”. I bought clothes that were too small for me and lost weight until they fit. I went to the gym daily, I would wake up before school to run. And what I thought would make me happy made me miserable. I was so low on B12 that I would be too unwell to move at least once a week, I couldn’t stand up on my own most of the time and I cried for no reason, frequently. The kicker of it all, I didn’t feel any better about myself or my body. It seemed that no matter how small I was, it was never small enough. It took me 4 years to work myself out of this mindset, and to this day it has never fully gone away. I have to be very careful about how I deal with food and talk about my body. I can’t shake the fear that no matter how old I get my ED will follow me around, like some kind of nasty creature that lives inside of me, screaming that I will never be good enough. No matter how much I heal, she will always be there, ugly and dark clawing at my insides.
It had been wonderful to see both the body positivity and then later the body neutrality movement gain traction, I figured that even if I had to live with this for the rest of my life at least girls younger than me would be spared the mind cage that was existing on pro-ana Tumblr. And whilst I was not naive to the fact that this content was definitely still out there in some dark corner of the internet, and girls were still accessing it, recently it has reared its big ugly head again, this time in video form on “skinnytok”.
The first video that made its way onto my fyp was of Liv Schmidt, calling herself a fat pig and basically bullying her audience into going for a walk suggesting that if they didn’t they were “fat little pigs” even going as far as to “oink” multiple times, I was horrified and promptly blocked her account. As celebrities had surgeries reversed and went on Ozempic and the Pilates girl became the ideal I felt the shift and then slowly but surely more content like this made its way onto my fyp, and I seemingly had no way of stopping it, I blocked every account that came across my page determined not to fall back into old patterns but like the heads of a hydra where I blocked one account two would return in it’s place. The videos all have fairly similar vibes, it is usually a skinny blonde girl saying something absolutely outrageous about dieting or sharing a quote similar to those which used to adorn my mirror. One girl stated “you don’t need to reward yourself with a treat, you’re not a dog”, something that 16 year old me would have taken to heart, only at 27 can I see that this is an absolutely ridiculous take. The statement that has got to me most though was “Your stomach grumbling is just it applauding you” as if hunger is something to be proud of, I spent years of my life hungry, like the food I ate wasn’t touching the sides, and I can tell you that is not congratulations, your body is screaming at you for sustenance. I feel like I am in a fever dream, like I have woken up and it's 2014 again and we are all sharing tips on how to prolong our hunger. What these videos all are missing, much like the posts on Tumblr, is any actually helpful information, the goal is not to be healthy, it is to be as skinny as possible.
The most scary part for me though is that when I was 16 I had to seek out thinspo, I went actively searching. With TikTok I didn’t have to do anything, the content was provided to me because the algorithm thought I would like it, or connect with it in some way and it is only because I never want to be that sick girl again that I have blocked every single account. I fear teenagers are not doing the same, 14 year old me would have fallen straight into the trap.
What I find most interesting is that this recent obsession with thinness seems to align with recent economic downturn as well as the attack on women's reproductive and other rights in the US, alongside the rise of the trad-wife and other equally disturbing “right wing” ideals. This is a huge topic, and probably something to explore in a different post but one thing I remember from the time I had an ED was being tired, so so tired, sleeping at 9:30pm, not participating in things, falling asleep in class, crying for no reason or from pure exhaustion.
When we are tired we can’t fight back, when we are so preoccupied with how we look we can’t form critical thoughts about anything. We are too consumed by our bodies, by what they look like, by how we are being perceived. We stop caring so much about others, when all you can think about is your hunger there is not space for much else.
I’m not blaming any of the young girls who will see this and get sucked up into it, we are conditioned from a young age as women to be as small as possible. The first time I was called fat I was 7, a girl in my class told me I looked pregnant in my book week costume. I have never forgotten. At 17 all I wanted was to feel beautiful, just for that one night and so I took extreme measures in order to achieve what I wanted. I just wish that we had continued to move in the right direction because this feels like a huge step back. But if there is one thing I know better than most, it is that you cannot hate yourself into a version of yourself that you love. Because I tried, and even at my smallest I still hated my body. There was always more weight to lose because I was coming at it from a place of disliking my body, wanting to disappear, not from a place of loving what my body could do. It wasn’t until I started appreciating my body for what it could do, not what it looked like that I actually started to feel confident in myself.
Ultimately there will never be a correct size to be, as a woman my body will be scrutinised no matter what I do, so the best thing I can do is love myself however I am. When Kate Moss said nothing tastes as good as skinny feels she was lying, I can name many things that taste as good as skinny feels, and to be honest, skinny felt sad, skinny felt like exhaustion and hunger and missing out on life.
This year I plan to run a 10k and a half marathon, both of those things are going to require me to be healthy, to fuel my body correctly, to take care of her so she doesn’t get injured. I also plan to live a long and fruitful life, in order to do that I need to build the foundations of a healthy body, because I won’t always be able to move like I currently can, so I’ve gotta build the muscle now, to protect older me, because I haven’t met her yet but I am sure she is worth my time and effort. Neither of these things require me to be a size 4.
I wish I could go back to 16 year old me and tell her she is loveable at all sizes, that being thin will not make her a better person, it will not get her better grades or allow her to make more friends. Being skinny will not make her happier. The work she needs to do is not outer work.
I leave you with this quote, because whenever I am feeling a little down about myself it is one I like to return to:
My body may never be exactly “right” by beauty standards, mostly because they keep changing, but unfortunately I have decided to enjoy life anyway, I hope the same for you.