Latest news with #SkinniSociété
NZ Herald
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- NZ Herald
How an innocent search on social media drew me into the disturbing world of extreme dieting
As well as walking daily and eating in a calorie deficit, Schmidt's accounts have shared (and in some cases since removed) controversial dieting advice, such as drinking water or tea to suppress appetite, eating your meals from side plates and implementing something called the 'three bite rule': eating just three bites of something you fancy, then leaving the rest. (In a restaurant, she says she 'tastes everything and finishes nothing'.) It is the kind of weight loss-talk that would be more at home in 2005 than 2025, when the aesthetic ideal was a hangover from the super-thin models of the 1990s. Schmidt's TikTok account, which had amassed more than 670,000 followers, was banned for violating the platform's community guideline in September last year (the hashtag SkinnyTok has also since been blocked, and if a user searches it, they are directed to 'expert resources'). In an interview at the time, she said that 'weight is a touchy topic, but that's what the viewers want'. And despite the ban, her content soon reappeared. It was re-shared by other accounts on TikTok and posted to Instagram and her fledgling YouTube channel, where she has active accounts with 325,000 and 100,000 followers respectively. 'Being skinny is literally a status symbol,' she said, in a now-deleted video that is still doing the rounds online. 'You're living life on hard mode being fat… you're wondering why the bouncer won't let you in? Check your stomach. You're wondering why… this job isn't taking you? Look at yourself.' On Instagram, she captioned a recent photo of her in a bikini with the phrase, 'nothing tastes as good as being this effortless feels' – seemingly a direct reference Kate Moss's now infamous mantra, 'nothing tastes as good as skinny feels'. It was there on Instagram, the photo-sharing app owned by Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, that Schmidt's videos appeared in my feed. (Instagram has now banned Schmidt's account from using monetisation tools and it is hidden to users under 18.) This type of content isn't new; as long as there has been social media there have been hidden weight loss and even 'pro-ana' – pro-anorexia – communities hidden in its ecosystem. But they were just that, hidden, on the blogging site Tumblr and in obscure forums and chatrooms. What has changed in the context of GLP-1 weight loss drugs is that thin is back in fashion and, with it comes a new wave of pro-anorexia content. This time, it is hidden in plain sight. Schmidt's intentions may well be nakedly commercial. You can buy her 'New Me' diet tracker for US$50 ($85), and her 'skinny essentials', which include resistance bands and fat-free salad dressing, from Amazon. She also runs a members-only group chat, which you can join for a fee, called 'the Skinni Société'. Or perhaps her tough-love rhetoric may be a cynical ploy to farm engagement – as she has said herself, videos that merely mention her name get 'millions' of views as a result. But, judging by the comments, some of her followers take her advice as gospel. And on TikTok, there is no shortage of other creators like her. The app's powerful algorithm can send users down a rabbit hole of content within a niche, meaning videos promoting extreme dieting techniques could be being fed to teenagers. Regulators are taking note – in fact, one French government minister is seeking to ban it once and for all. Clara Chappaz is the Minister Delegate for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Technologies in the Government of Prime Minister François Bayrou. In April, she reported '#SkinnyTok' to France's audiovisual and digital watchdog, and to the EU, over concerns that it is promoting anorexia. 'These videos promoting extreme thinness are revolting and absolutely unacceptable,' she said. 'Digital tools are marvellous in terms of progress and freedom, but badly used they can shatter lives… the social networks cannot escape their responsibility.' The European Commission opened a probe into TikTok's algorithm and how it affects minors last February, under the bloc's content moderation rulebook, the Digital Services Act. As part of it, it began investigating how the platform promotes content relating to eating disorders. French politician Clara Chappaz said 'social networks cannot escape their responsibility' to crack down on eating disorder content. Photo / Getty Images Point de Contact, an organisation recently named by regulator Arcom as a 'trusted flagger' of harmful digital content, also confirmed their teams are looking into the matter in co-ordination with authorities, as reported by Politico. 'The difficulty is to prove that the content is illegal, and that the message is directly targeted at minors,' a Point de Contact spokesperson says. 'But it's certain that TikTok isn't scanning this hashtag fast enough.' Experts are clear that eating disorders have no single cause, but there is a growing body of research that suggests – perhaps unsurprisingly – that exposure to this kind of online content could be a factor in fuelling or exacerbating disordered eating. Researchers have studied the impact it can have on young women's body image and concluded that it can cause 'psychological harm even when explicit pro-ana content is not sought out and even when their TikTok use is time-limited in nature'. Dr Victoria Chapman is a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Royal Free Hospital in London who specialises in eating disorders. She says that weight loss social media content often comes up in her clinical practice. 'When we meet patients, when we do assessments, we quite often ask what they're doing on social media,' she says. 'My view – and I think there's increasing evidence for this – is that these platforms that focus on image [such as TikTok and Instagram] are associated with the risk factors that make someone vulnerable to an eating disorder.' More worrying still is how severe mental illness in children and young people has risen. There has been a 65% rise in the number of children admitted to acute hospital wards in England because of serious concerns over their mental health in a decade, according to a study published in the Lancet Child & Adolescent Health journal. Over half – 53.4% – were because of self-harm, but the number of annual admissions for eating disorders surged over the same period, from 478 to 2938. 'We know that a combination of genetics, biological factors and sociocultural factors contribute to the development of an eating disorder,' says Umairah Malik, the clinical manager for Beat, an eating disorder charity. 'Some of these sociocultural factors include low self esteem, body dissatisfaction… alongside things like anxiety, depression and perfectionist traits. If someone is already vulnerable to developing an eating disorder, [social media] has the potential to be really harmful and damaging.' Chappaz may be fighting a losing battle – it seems that, even when social media platforms attempt to crack down on pro-anorexia content, it is impossible to stem the flow. When I first started researching this not-so-hidden online world, I found out that it wasn't difficult to access. If you search an obvious term in TikTok, such as 'skinny' or 'anorexia' a cartoon heart and a support message appears with links to mental health and eating disorder resources. TikTok does not allow content showing or promoting disordered eating or dangerous weight-loss behaviours, and age-restricts content that idealises certain (thin) body types. But despite these safety measures, users may circumvent content filters by using covert hashtags – misspelt words, for instance, or abbreviations – and speak in code. Moreover, some concerning videos seem to be hiding in plain sight: under the seemingly benign 'weight loss' tag, videos promoting extreme dieting and unhealthy body weights appear. Amy Glover, a 29-year-old writer in recovery from an eating disorder, discovered that it was almost impossible to avoid this kind of content on TikTok, no matter how hard she tried. 'It feels to me like any food or exercise-related search I make [on social media] eventually leads to weight-loss content, and [it's] quite often not what I would consider healthy advice,' she says. 'I wonder if the algorithm is simply 'testing' more controversial content on me. I find that frustrating and worrying… Eating disorders can be competitive and involve a lot of negative self-talk, which I feel a lot of these videos encourage.' Research conducted by Beat has shown that, even if harmful social media content doesn't directly cause eating disorders, it can easily exacerbate them. 'It goes beyond young people,' Malik says. 'We did a survey in 2022, looking at online platforms – of the people who answered, over 90% of those with experience of having an eating disorder had encountered content online that was harmful in the context of that eating disorder. People talked about it being addictive, and not having control over the content that was being displayed. 'That kind of content could be actively encouraging, promoting or glamourising an eating disorder, but then you also have things like diet culture, fitness and weight-loss content that can [also] be really harmful for people,' she adds. A TikTok spokesperson says: 'We regularly review our safety measures to address evolving risks and have blocked search results for #SkinnyTok since it has become linked to unhealthy weight loss content. We continue to restrict videos from teen accounts and provide health experts and information in TikTok Search.' Glover is four years into her recovery, and now in her late 20s, which she says makes it easier. But these algorithms – which seem to be fine-tuned to pick up on the slightest hint of body insecurity – could be force-feeding these videos to young women and girls who are much younger. TikTok, of course, is where they spend all their time. Ofcom research earlier this year found 96% of 13-17 year olds in the UK are on social media. While the app takes measures to shut down dangerous hashtags (as it did with #legginglegs, another tag related to disordered eating, earlier this year), it is like playing whack-a-mole, as more content springs up to evade the platform's safety features. What is clear, though, is that its preternatural algorithm can make this worse, serving up potentially dangerous content to those who aren't even looking for it. 'Even after reporting harmful content or attempting to avoid it, users often still see more being recommended to them, or popping up without warning. We'd like to know what platforms plan to do about recommended content and algorithms,' says Tom Quinn, Beat's director of external affairs. 'We know that people who create and share this kind of content are often unwell themselves... but we'd like to see more proactivity and extensive bans on damaging content being uploaded or shared. Alongside this, we want to see platforms working with eating disorder experts to improve moderation efforts and ensure that recovery-positive, support-based content is widely available,' he adds. In her own defence, Schmidt has said, 'We all have the option to follow and block any content we want.' But when you're a teenager, and potentially a vulnerable one, should the social media platforms be doing more to block it for you? Some lawmakers now certainly think so – and few parents would disagree.
Malaysian Reserve
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Malaysian Reserve
TikTok's #SkinnyTok rebranded eating disorders dangerously fast
Social media influencers mask their harmful content with seemingly-innocuous healthy buzzwords to reach a broader audience #SKINNYTOK is dead. Or at least that's what TikTok wants you to believe after its recent ban of the hashtag promoting an extreme thin ideal. That might have appeased regulators, but it shouldn't satisfy parents of teens on the app. An army of influencers is keeping the trend alive, putting vulnerable young people in harm's way. Today's social media landscape makes it all too easy for creators to repackage and disguise disordered eating as a 'healthy' part of everyday life. That lifestyle then gets monetised on various platforms — via habit trackers, group chats and 30-day aspirational challenges — and shared with a much broader audience. The rise of #SkinnyTok is in many ways a rehashing of the pro-eating disorder content of the past. In the mid 1990s it was Kate Moss and 'heroin chic.' Then came the Tumblr posts in the early aughts praising 'Ana' and 'Mia,' fictional characters that stood for anorexia and bulimia. Now, it's 23-year-old influencer Liv Schmidt telling her followers to 'eat wise, drop a size.' Schmidt, a prominent # SkinnyTok influencer who is often credited with lopping the 'y' off of 'skinny' and replacing it with an 'i,' is the founder of the members-only group 'Skinni Société.' In September, she was banned from TikTok amid scrutiny by the Wall Street Journal. The fact that she continues to make headlines some nine months later drives home the perpetual game of whack-a-mole that regulators are playing with problematic content. After her TikTok ban, Schmidt simply moved her audience over to Instagram, where her followers have grown from 67,000 to more than 320,000. Until recently, she was charging people US$20 (RM94) per month for a 'motivational' group chat, but when The Cut found at least a dozen of those users were in high school, Meta Platforms Inc demonetised her profile in May. And yet her Instagram account still exists and she's actively posting to her YouTube channel. A video titled 'How to Create a Skinni Body on a Budget' raked in nearly 50,000 views within a week, a particularly disturbing level of engagement considering she's encouraging her viewers to consume fewer than 1,000 calories a day — far less than what health officials recommend for a nutrient-dense meal. In her Instagram bio, Schmidt links to a Google LLC application where anyone can apply to her Skinni Société. While membership previously cost just US$20 per month, screenshots posted on social media suggest this latest iteration could run about US$2,900 per month — a gulf that proves her schtick is a complete black box. Regardless of price point, she continues to use public platforms to lure people into private spaces where conversations promoting disordered eating can flourish unchecked — all while profiting from them. Bloomberg Opinion made several attempts to reach out to Schmidt for comment, but she did not respond. This sort of content is causing real harm. National Alliance for Eating Disorders, founder and CEO Johanna Kandel said the uptick in callers mentioning #SkinnyTok to her organisation's hotline began last winter. And despite social media companies' efforts to blunt the reach of the trend, as many as one in five calls fielded by the nonprofit in recent weeks have referenced the hashtag. Some of those callers had past struggles with an eating disorder that was restarted by the hashtag, while others started following #SkinnyTok to 'better themselves' or 'get healthy' only to be pulled into a precarious mental space, Kandel says. The bombardment of images of a skinny ideal can have even broader harms. Although this type of content has always lurked in the dark corners of the internet, people had to actively seek it out. Now, the algorithm delivers it on a platter. That's being served in insidious ways. While Schmidt's rhetoric may leave little to the imagination, other influencers frame their content more subliminally. They encourage a disciplined lifestyle that blurs the lines of health consciousness and restrictive eating, which makes it all the more difficult to detect: Walk 15,000 steps a day, drink tea, nourish the body — these are things that might not raise alarm bells if a parent were to find them on their kid's social feeds. Sure, the TikTok trends that do raise alarm bells — remember 'legging legs'? — are quick to get shut down. But what about something as seemingly innocuous as the popular 'what I eat in a day' videos? How are social media companies expected to police troubling content that's cloaked in euphemisms like 'wellness' and 'self-care'? It's a question that weighs on wellness and lifestyle creators who are trying their best to combat the negative content out there. When speaking with Kate Glavan, a 26-year-old influencer, it's clear why she has been vocal about her experience with disordered eating: 'I don't know a single woman that hasn't struggled with some sort of body image or food issue,' she said. 'The only thing that snapped me out of my eating disorder was learning how it was destroying my health. I had a doctor look at my blood work and tell me I had the bone density of a 70-year-old woman at the of age 17.' Whether that would work on today's 17-year-olds is up for debate. 'A lot of younger Gen Zers now believe that everything is rigged — schools, doctors, the government. That paranoia has created a distrust of expertise itself,' Glavan explained. 'They think the whole medical system is corrupt, so they turn to influencers instead — which is incredibly dangerous.' How dangerous? University of Toronto assistant professor Amanda Raffoul, who studies eating disorders, says there's 'a pretty solid body of evidence that the more young people in particular spent time online and on social media, the more likely they are to have poor body image, have negative thoughts about their appearance and to be engaging in harmful eating-related behaviours.' For example, a 2023 review of 50 studies found that social media leads to peer comparisons and internalisation of a 'thin' ideal, which together contribute to body image anxiety, poor mental health and for some, disordered eating. That effect is exacerbated when someone has certain risk factors — they are female or have a high body mass index (BMI), for example — and are exposed to content that encourages eating disorders. The danger is most acute in adolescent girls. That skinny ideal can elicit strong emotions and feelings of inadequacy at a time when they don't yet have the tools to separate reality from fiction. But researchers also see a worrisome trend in adolescent boys who have been drawn in by fitfluencers pushing obsessive muscle training, unproven supplements and restrictive diets. After a 2021 Wall Street Journal investigation revealed Meta was fully aware of Instagram's potential to pull teen girls into a body image spiral, social media companies have offered some guardrails around problematic content. Kandel says when her nonprofit starts to hear multiple callers mentioning specific body image-related hashtags, it notifies companies, which typically are quick to shut them down. While helpful, it also feels like the companies are doing the bare minimum to protect kids. Although eating disorder researchers can glean insights from individual social feeds, they still can't get their hands on the internal data that could help them identify who is most at risk of harm and craft better safeguards. For adolescents, the most powerful solution would be to step away from social media. A research by American Psychological Association shows that spending less time scrolling can improve body image in struggling teens and young adults. But if that's not realistic, parents and teachers could help them think more critically about what they're seeing online — and how influencers like Schmidt make money by chipping away at their self-esteem. — Bloomberg This column does not ecessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. This article first appeared in The Malaysian Reserve weekly print edition
Atlantic
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
When SkinnyTok Came for Me
The bride had to do just one last thing before she walked down the aisle. 'I currently am in the bathroom in my wedding dress I asked everyone for just a few mins alone so that I could message you this.' Was she writing to an estranged friend? An old lover—the one that got away? At the beginning of her 'journey,' the bride weighed 134 pounds. 'My goal was to just lose 5lbs,' she wrote, but she had somehow dropped down to 110. 'I'm crying writing this because I have never felt so healthy and confident. THANK YOU!!!' The message was accompanied by two photos—a before and an after. The first shows a thin woman who looks to be a size 2 or 4. In the second, the woman's bones are visible beneath her skin, and her leggings sag. She owed all of this to Liv Schmidt, a 23-year-old influencer known for her harsh, no-bullshit approach to staying thin. 'You feel like a best friend and sister to me,' the bride wrote to Schmidt, who shared the message on Instagram. Schmidt is the queen of SkinnyTok—a corner of the internet where thin, mostly white women try to make America skinny again. Her 'what I eat in a day to stay skinny' videos thrust her into virality about a year ago. There she is with her mint tea—which she always drinks before eating anything, to check if she's really hungry or just bored—or a mile-high ice-cream sundae that she'll take three bites of before tossing. She's very clear: She stays skinny by not eating much. Many find this refreshingly honest. Others think she's promoting eating disorders. Influencers have condemned her; magazines have published scathing critiques. Last month, Meta removed her ability to sell subscriptions ($20 a month for access to private content and a group chat called the 'Skinni Société') on Instagram, and this month, TikTok banned the SkinnyTok hashtag worldwide, saying it was 'linked to unhealthy weight loss content.' And in response, the right has championed Schmidt. She has been canceled, and she may be more powerful than ever. I didn't mean to join the legions of young women on SkinnyTok. It happened fast. I liked an Instagram reel about an 'Easy High Protein, Low Calorie Breakfast.' What I got next, I didn't ask for. Within hours, my Instagram 'explore' page was flooded with videos of conventionally pretty, thin women preaching one message: Stop eating. Phrases such as 'You're not a dog, don't treat yourself with food' and the Kate Moss classic, 'Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels,' began to flood my feed—and my subconscious. At lunch with a friend one Saturday, I didn't finish my salad. 'Do you know Liv Schmidt?' I asked. 'The three-bite rule? Of course I do. She's kind of a genius.' I realized I wasn't down this rabbit hole alone. Conor Friedersdorf: The many ripple effects of the weight-loss industry 'I know the advice I'm getting from these women is not healthy,' another friend said, but 'everything I want is on the other side of being skinny, and these women are going to help me get there.' 'I like SkinnyTok. It helps me to not eat 'the extra thing' I don't need. Don't like it? Don't follow it.' 'It's internalized misogynistic brainwash!' 'I love that skinny bitch.' Where had Schmidt come from, and what had happened to the 'body positivity' movement that had been so loudly touted through the past decade? You can form a community around anything online. When I was a kid in the 2000s, teenage girls with eating disorders were gathering on 'thinspiration' websites, where they could exchange tips. Tabloids sold copies off body shaming—one day Britney Spears was too fat; the next, Lindsay Lohan was too skinny—and my friends and I were going around with 100-calorie Chips Ahoy! packs in our lunchboxes. By the time I was a teenager, the body-positivity movement had arrived, promising to change the culture. Plus-size models started appearing in ad campaigns. The problem wasn't women's bodies, activists argued, but women feeling bad about their bodies. Yet when people tried to force society to embrace new body norms, society lashed out, bringing to the surface a lot of underlying hatred. 'Body positivity didn't resonate with a lot of people, because it felt like lying,' Maalvika Bhat, a 25-year-old TikTok influencer who is getting a doctorate in computer science and communication at Northwestern University, told me. Many felt that the movement was in denial about both the practical health risks of being overweight and America's willingness to put its engrained fat phobia aside. Ozempic has accelerated that backlash against body positivity. Many of the plus-size leaders of the body-positivity movement shut up and shrunk down. Their followers noticed that they were using a weight-loss drug. Apparently you didn't have to love yourself as you were—and you didn't have to suffer to change, either. You just had to have a prescription and enough money to pay for it. But what about those pesky last 10 pounds, the difference between being a size 6 and a size 2? Although some healthy-weight women with no medical reason to take GLP-1 drugs have nonetheless found work-arounds to get their hands on the medication, most aren't going to those lengths. How would they keep up now that skinny was back? For some, the answer was SkinnyTok. You don't need a prescription to be ultrathin. You just need a bad relationship with food, fueled by a skinny stranger yelling mean-girl mantras at you. In the end, the body-positivity movement's lasting effect may have been to prove the validity of the very message it was trying to combat—that thinner people are treated better. At least, many women feel, SkinnyTok is telling them the truth. As one SkinnyTok influencer put it, 'Don't sugarcoat that or you'll eat that too.' I started listening more closely to the SkinnyTok videos. They weren't just about self-deprivation. They were about being classy. They were about being a lady—the right kind of woman, one that men drool over. They were, most importantly, about being small. In one of Schmidt's videos, she's approached by a man in a black car during a photo shoot. The caption reads: 'This is the treatment Skinni gets you. Was just taking pics … Then a Rolls-Royce rolled up begging for my number like I'm on the menu mid photo. He saw clavicle he swerved. He saw cheekbones lost composure.' From the July 2025 Issue: Inside the exclusive, obsessive, surprisingly litigious world of luxury fitness SkinnyTok influencers basically never talk in their videos about politics. They aren't preaching about Donald Trump—let alone about issues such as abortion or immigration. And yet everything they talk about—the emphasis on girls and how girls need to behave and how small they need to be—is, of course, political. A few days after my Instagram feed surrendered to the SkinnyTok takeover, the tradwife content began to sneak in. Beautiful women baking bread in linen dresses spoke to me about embracing my divine femininity. I should consider 'softer living' and 'embracing my natural role.' All of a sudden, I wondered whether I, a single woman in her late 20s living in Manhattan, should trade it all in to become a mother of 10 on a farm in Montana. Watch a few more of these videos, and soon you'll be directed to the anti-vax moms, or the Turning Point USA sweetheart Alex Clark's wellness podcast, Cultural Apothecary, or the full-on conspiratorial alt-right universe. This is just how the internet works. Eviane Leidig, the author of The Women of the Far Right: Social Media Influencers and Online Radicalization, sees a connection between SkinnyTok and tradwives in their 'very strong visual representation of femininity.' Whether they mean to be or not, they have become part of the same pipeline. Algorithms grab your attention with lighter, relatable content while exposing you to more extremist viewpoints. The alt-right, she said, is great at making aspirational and seemingly apolitical content that viewers relate to. 'This is a deliberate strategy that the conservative space has been employing over the last several years to capitalize on cultural issues as a gateway to radicalize audiences into more extreme viewpoints.' Two months ago, Evie Magazine, a right-wing publication that promotes traditional femininity, ran a profile of Schmidt: 'Banned for Being Honest? Meet Liv Schmidt, the Girl Who Made 'Skinny' Go Viral.' The magazine had one of the biggest tradwife influencers, Hannah Neeleman of Ballerina Farm, on its cover back in November. The article about Schmidt focused on her being canceled and banned on a number of platforms for promoting thinness. 'I don't owe the internet a version of me that's palatable,' Schmidt told the magazine. 'If a girl bigger than me posted what I eat in a day, no one would care. But when I do, it becomes controversial. Why? Because I'm blonde, thin, young, and unapologetic.' Last year, Evie profiled Amanda Dobler, another SkinnyTok figurehead, whom it described as 'TikTok's skinny queen'—'both brutally honest and surprisingly sweet.' The more the left has attacked Schmidt, the more the right has celebrated her. Bhat, who describes herself as progressive, said, 'I think the left is deeply, deeply exclusive.' On the right, 'you're allowed to make dozens of mistakes and not be shunned. They say, 'If the left doesn't welcome you, we will.' And they always do.' You can't deduce a political manifesto from someone's Instagram followers, but it seems worth noting that Schmidt follows conservative figureheads including RFK Jr., Candace Owens, and Brett Cooper. When she posted about losing the paid-subscription feature on her Instagram, through which she had been making nearly $130,000 a month, according to AirMail, she tagged Joe Rogan. 'She's clearly trying to get her foot in the door with the alternatives,' Ali Ambrose, an influencer who critiques SkinnyTok, told me. (Ambrose struggled with an eating disorder for years, and says Schmidt's content pushed her back into unhealthy habits.) Schmidt's appeal does cross party lines, though. When I polled a politically diverse group of my own friends, my most conservative friends loved SkinnyTok. A number of my progressive friends did too; they just felt like they shouldn't say so out loud. Schmidt has written that the Skinni Société is not 'a starvation or extreme diet community.' She didn't respond to multiple requests for an interview, but I spoke with Amanda Dobler, another SkinnyTok influencer. She remains on TikTok, though she has twice been temporarily barred from its Creator Rewards Program, through which she made some money for her videos, for not abiding by 'community guidelines.' Dobler is almost 10 years older than Schmidt, so she attracts a slightly different demographic. I asked her if she considered herself a political person, or her content politically charged. She responded with a decisive no. 'I'm up at 4 a.m. working my ass off, so I would say I'm the opposite of a tradwife,' she told me. 'If people relate it to right wing, to left wing,' she said, 'there's only so much of the narrative that I can control.' Sophie Gilbert: What porn taught a generation of women Dobler is known for her directness. If anything, she's even harsher online than Schmidt is. Right before our call, I scrolled through her TikTok profile: 'You are killing yourself with the shit you eat. It's disgusting. And you should feel shameful.' I briefly wondered if she'd be able to detect my own insecurities through the phone. But the Dobler I spoke with was approachable and friendly. I instantly liked her. I even opened up to her about the things I wish I could change about my body. 'There's nothing wrong with wanting to look a little better,' she said. Unlike a number of SkinnyTok influencers who only just entered the field, Dobler has been a fat-loss and mindset coach for six years. She talks about the importance of getting your nutrients instead of exclusively practicing restraint. She also pushes for a consistent workout routine, while others focus exclusively on their step count to burn calories and avoid bulking at the gym (SkinnyTok is a spectrum). I brought up the criticism that SkinnyTok content encourages young people to adopt disordered-eating habits. Dobler said that she doesn't coach children, and that the majority of her clients are in their 30s through 50s. 'I get it. It's hard if you're a parent seeing stuff online,' she told me. 'But at the same time, there's porn online; there's a bunch of weird crap. I think that there is a lot of other censorship that should be going on.' When I asked why she was so harsh in her videos, she told me, 'That's the type of talk that I need. I wouldn't say that I'm mean. I'm just blunt.' She added, 'I've been in all of the situations that I'm talking through. So it's not like I'm just up here scolding people.' This echoed something Bhat had said to me: SkinnyTok's ruthless tone rings true to many women because they're already being so ruthless toward themselves. I'd be kidding myself if I said a woman's body size doesn't affect her prospects for dating, and even jobs. I would be lying if I said I did not desperately want to be slightly thinner—that I hadn't wanted that from the moment I first watched my mother critique her own body in her bedroom mirror. I hesitate to admit that I've lost four pounds since I saw my first SkinnyTok video. I have not walked 40,000 steps a day, nor have I stopped eating after three bites. I've just stopped eating when I'm full, which, as silly as it sounds, I did learn from SkinnyTok. Still, I think it's time to unsubscribe. The body of my dreams isn't worth risking my health for. I have two nieces, ages 3 and 6. I hate the idea that somebody might one day tell them to shrink themselves. To them, a swimsuit is nothing but a promise that they'll spend the afternoon running through the sprinkler. They're perfect, and they dream of being bigger, faster, stronger—not smaller.
Daily Mail
24-05-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
'Skinny influencer' Liv Schmidt wages war after her group chat is demonetized by Meta
Liv Schmidt, the 23-year-old influencer behind the controversial weight-loss community 'Skinni Société,' is firing back after Meta restricted her Instagram account and stripped it of monetization following a damning New York Magazine exposé. Schmidt, who charges $20 a month for access to her private content and group chats, came under scrutiny after The Cut published an in-depth investigation by reporter EJ Dickson. The article revealed that members—many of them allegedly underage—were exchanging extreme low-calorie meal plans, competing over who could eat less, and posting about symptoms like dizziness, fatigue, and hair loss. After the article was published, Meta communication representative Andy Stone, wrote in a post on X, 'This account is no longer able to offer subscriptions or use any of our monetization tools. And we restricted it so it's only visible to people over 18.' In response, Schmidt took to Instagram to accuse Meta of acting without giving her a chance to respond. The story posted to her account wrote: '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. 'And meanwhile, one person with a vendetta was able to spin a false narrative that cost me my business. '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. 'I'm not going to beg to defend myself to a company that never once asked for my side of the story.' After the article was published, Meta communication representative Andy Stone, confirmed in a post on X that In The Cut's report, former members described the group as obsessive and competitive. Emma, a 37-year-old teacher and former subscriber, said: 'They're all so obsessive, so it's hard to not become obsessive too. It's, like, this little cult of being skinny.' Another former member, Alison, said: 'All she ever spoke about was food. She would talk about being hungry, how she's looking forward to her next meal, how the amount of time she put into being skinny was suffocating. It's actually pretty sad.' Schmidt has maintained that she does not promote eating disorders and claims her program offers 'accountability.' In her own community guidelines, she notes: 'You will be eating less than normal if your goal is weight loss. That's science.' But critics, including registered dietitians consulted by The Cut, say the calorie levels Schmidt promotes are dangerously low. 'What she's eating is not enough to sustain her even without activity,' said nutritionist Melainie Rogers after reviewing Schmidt's posted meal diaries. After her TikTok ban, Schmidt leaned into the controversy, framing herself as a target of censorship. Her followers rallied behind her, and in April, the conservative women's magazine Evie published a glowing profile titled 'Banned for Being Honest?' Far from silencing her, the backlash only amplified her reach—Schmidt has since quadrupled her Instagram following. According to Air Mail, she now earns an estimated $130,000 per month from the 6,500 paying members of the Skinni Société. Unlike typical influencers, Schmidt has turned her brand into a subscription-based community where followers pay to mimic her lifestyle—down to her meals, workouts, and daily mantras. In March, she reposted a message from a subscriber who had written a school paper about her. 'Her content has helped and continues to help so many young girls form a healthy relationship with food and exercise,' the follower wrote. 'She truly exemplifies the values of what a role model should be.'
