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Skinnytok is a hashtag used on different social media platforms, especially on Tiktok from which it originated. The posts underneath it showcase people’s weight loss journeys, healthy recipes and videos motivating people to lose weight. But is it all really about being healthy? And how does it affect young women who are the target audience of those posts?

With the passing of the “popular feminism” era we can observe many more content creators posting harmful content ruining young girls' perception of what a healthy body looks like. It’s not only about nutrition and moving your body anymore, it’s about being as skinny as possible now. Lately we can see less and less slogans exhorting women to love their bodies. In the late 2010s/early 2020s the phrase “love yourself” was what companies were trying to sell us. The clothes sizes became more diverse and women advertising the clothes weren’t the typical 2000s models, who used to rule our TV screens, anymore. Nowadays we came back to the traditional imagery; thin white women often dressed in a way that attracts the male recipients.

The “skinnytok” trend wouldn't be so bad if it really was about taking care of your body and becoming healthier as it originally intended. Sadly as it became more and more popular content creators promoting it started using vulgar language as a form of “motivation” for their viewers. They often compare other women to animals such as pigs or dogs. Phrases like “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” or “Being skinny is THE fashion statement” were just a view of sentences often reappearing while I was doing my research. Tiktoker @rachellledezma has posted a video of herself doing a workout while in the background we could hear a Tiktok sound of a woman saying “My favourite thing to be is skinny [...] and it is my favourite fear to not be”. The sound has over a thousand uses of numerous Tiktokers recording themselves while it plays in the back for us to hear. Pinterest user @777marianna who has gathered over 20 thousand followers has posted a photo with the caption “Pretty girls have anemia”, some of the comments underneath it have said “I wish.” or “What aesthetic you are? Anemic girl core aesthetic”. Those are just two examples of the worryingly popular trend. 

Another deeply concerning thing I have noticed while researching skinnytok is how popular the term “heroin chic” is. Heroin chic is a style that originated in the 1990s and got popular because of a supermodel Gia Carangi. The main thing about the typical Heroin chic was being unbelievably thin, with dark circles around her your and thinning hair. Heroin chic was all about the glorification of drug abuse and now it is doing its grand comeback in the world of social media. But it is not only heroin that is being fetishised, many other drugs are now often advertised by internet users as weightloss tools. But who is the face of modern heroin chic? A person I noticed is often used as an example is Kate Moss. “She’s had plenty of drug problems and dated some questionable men. She’s been blamed for promoting anorexia and heroin use”, “It looked like the Kate Moss era was officially over, but we all know it wasn’t”, “She’s in and out of rehab. She does what she wants and she looks cool doing it” are just a few quotes about Kate that are incredibly popular and often used in videos almost always accompanied by Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” playing in the background. Another term used by people admiring this sort of an aesthetic is “snowing body”. “Snow” is a code name for cocaine, “snowing body” is the body of a person who has been abusing this drug to the point of an unhealthy weight loss.