There Are No Girls on the Internet - #SkinnyTok Was Banned from TikTok. So Why Is It Still Everywhere?

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

  Welcome to #SkinnyTok — a corner of TikTok where extreme thinness is framed as “discipline,” wellness becomes control, and disordered eating is dressed up as aesthetic. Even though TikTok banned the hashtag and popular creators like Liv Schmidt , the content hasn’t disappeared,  it’s just gotten harder to spot. In this episode, journalist Kat Tenbarge joins us to unpack how TikTok’s design glorifies harmful beauty standards and quietly funnels users — especially women and girls — toward content that can distort how we see our bodies and ourselves.  She explains why simply banning it doesn't work, and how creators are effectively pushing back to confront it head-on. Read more: Eating Disorder Content Is Infiltrating TikTok. Some Creators Are Going Viral Debunking It – by Kat Tenbarge, Wired Follow Kat’s work at Spitfire News: https://spitfirenews.com/   💜 Struggling or need support? Visit The Project HEAL     If you’re listening on Spotify, you can leave a comment there or email us at [e-mail]!    Follow Bridget and TANGOTI on social media! Many vids each week.   instagram.com/bridgetmarieindc/    tiktok.com/@bridgetmarieindc    youtube.com/@ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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This was just basketball. So listen to Point Game on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Quick heads up. Today's episode talks about disordered eating. They want women to be small. They want women to take up less space. There are no girls on the internet as a particular.

production of IHeart Radio and UnBossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is there are no girls on the internet. Open TikTok and it won't take long before you find it. A perfect body. A suspiciously low calorie what I eat in the day. A silent morning routine drenched in beige and disciplined. Welcome to Skinny Talk. A world where thinness isn't just the goal.

It's the ideology. But this isn't just about diets or aesthetics. It's about control. And it's about what our culture is. expects women to be. Small, quiet, beautiful, and preoccupied with staying that way. And platforms like TikTok aren't just reflecting those values. They're amplifying them. Journalist Kat Tanbarge of Spitfire News has been reporting on how social media glorifies extreme thinness and how it harms women and girls. But what sets her work apart is that she doesn't just cover the tech itself. She looks

at how people actually use it. And what that reveals about the world we're building online. Particularly when you report on technology, a lot of times it's coming from a male-centered perspective and through a sort of male lens, where the things that people are actually doing with the technology are secondary to like the companies that are involved, the products they're releasing, like the technology itself. And both sides are ultimately crucial to understanding the whole. But too frequently, we leave out sort of the negative societal consequences of technology and internet culture. Kat's reporting sits at the intersection of gender, social media, and technology. She spent years digging into what women and girls are doing online, a beat that's often dismissed as not serious news, but that underestimation has actually put her ahead of the curve,

catching major cultural shifts before they hit the mainstream. What drew you to reporting on this kind of stuff? For me, I grew up in, like, fully the social media age. So by the time that I was in high school, I was on YouTube, Tumblr, Snapchat, like all the time. And I had aspirations of becoming a journalist, but I didn't initially think that I would be reporting on these types of topics. I saw myself as more of a, quote, unquote, like, serious news reporter. So, like, when I was in college studying journalism, I was really looking at covering politics. And, like, politics through a very traditional lens.

But over the course of my college career, I over time realized that I had all this knowledge about like influencers and social media spaces and that that was becoming more and more important to our wider cultural conversation and the way that we all live. So when I graduated, I specifically pursued reporting on like the YouTube space and the influencer space. And over the years, what's been really interesting is that space has become more and more relevant to the social. sort of mainstream politics that I had originally thought I would be reporting on. You kind of caught it early. Yeah. I feel like I was like kind of on this wave. And a lot of particularly women journalists who I looked up to at the time that I was in

college, women like Taylor Lorenz has been a big mentor to me. And she was someone who was at these major legacy institutions like saying this stuff is really important. And it was really ahead of the curve as to what we all now know, which is that. This makes up so much of what our daily lives are like. She's right. What's happening in online spaces like Skinny Talk says a lot about our culture and our politics. Skinny Talk isn't an official category.

It's a term used to describe content that centers on extreme thinness, weight loss, and often glorifies disordered eating. It's the kind of stuff that can quietly take over your feed, depending on what the algorithm thinks you want to see. TikTok recently announced they were banning Skinny Talk. Now if you search the hashtag, you'll be redirected to eating disorder resources instead of videos. But this content is not just about weight. It reflects a deeper social message that women shouldn't just be thin, we should be thin, hot, quiet, and constantly working to stay that way. And while these ideas aren't really new, algorithms are turbocharging them for a digital age.

Kat, you covered Skiddy Talk for Wired. This kind of content is definitely connected to the current political and social climate, but it is also not new because I remember it being all over Tumblr. So what's changed about the way this kind of content shows up on social media platforms like TikTok today? What I saw happening last year across a number of different mainstream social media platforms, one of them was X, formerly Twitter, another one was TikTok, and I'm thinking a lot on Instagram too, is this corner of the internet that was previously really niche, this like pro eating disorder part of the internet, which, like you said, it's been around for decades.

Even before social media, it was on forums. Like, from the time that the internet existed, there were communities of people who were sort of, like, when you go into these communities, what it is is it's like a space for people who are experiencing eating disorders to connect. But unfortunately, the culture that flourishes within them encourages and sort of promotes eating disorders. And so what I saw happening last year is this culture had escaped containment

from these niche community spaces and was being algorithmically pushed to almost everyone on these social media platforms. I had people, multiple people reaching out to me being like, this pro-eating disorder stuff is on my for you page. This pro-eating disorder stuff is right when I open up Twitter, it's the first tweet that I see that's being pushed to me.

And what I eventually figured out is that these social media platforms in the process of developing new features, like community tabs, and tweaking their algorithms, as well as some of these broader cultural changes that were happening, it was a perfect storm where all of a sudden, pro-eating disorder content went from something you had to seek out

to something you could no longer avoid. And so Skinny Talk is another iteration of this, where if you are a TikTok user, even now, even they've recently banned the Skinny Talk hashtag in response to a lot of this great reporting that's come out, But even now when I open up TikTok, I cannot avoid it is like my feet is cluttered with all of these posts that are glorifying extreme thinness, influencing young women in particular in girls to have an extreme calorie deficit. There's content for boys and men that encourages them to lose a lot of weight really dramatically and drastically. And it's like this toxic soup that I find to be like so harmful to people's mental health.

and especially a disturbing kind of side effect of where we're out with social media. I have experienced the exact same thing. As I said, I've been on the internet for a really long time. And only very, very recently, like in the last few years, I knew that kind of content was out there. But this is the first time that it's really been surfaced for me, right? I went my entire life never thinking about whether or not a human is meant to have a flat stomach. It just never came up. And now it is everywhere.

And I'm not somebody who has, you know, struggled with disorder eating and, like, real body image issues in my life. But only in the last few years have I found myself thinking about this because it is all I am seeing on social media. And I can only imagine what that would be like if I wasn't an older person, right? If I'm 14, 15, 16, if the way that it's impacting me as like a fully formed adult, how is it impacting youth who are being surfaced this kind of content on the regular? Yes, I've talked to like at least half a dozen experts in the eating disorder space, people who work with treatment, people who studied this through an academic lens. And what I've heard is that over the course of the last few decades, eating disorders have emerged as a phenomenon and they have skyrocketed alongside the proliferation of mass media. So what that means is that when TV and magazines became much more commonplace in like the 20th century, You started to see women and girls in particular.

They were encountering cover images on magazines. They were encountering women in commercials and on TV and in movies who fit this beauty standard that oftentimes was extreme thinness. And this beauty standard, it comes from a lot of different places, but it's also a beauty standard that prioritizes whiteness. It's a beauty standard that prioritizes these sort of conventional Eurocentric features. And it's a beauty standard that, really over-emphasizes being thin.

And you see diet culture reflect this. You see the way that diet and exercise are incentivized and the way that thinness is incentivized in sort of all walks of life, all contribute to sort of the social factors that drive eating disorders. So here's something I keep noticing in content that flirts with disordered eating.

The people making it rarely think they're promoting anything harmful. They say they're just being real and that life really is easier when you're thinner. And the worst part is, they're not entirely wrong, but calling that honesty doesn't do anything to challenge the system. In fact, it only props it up. It tells us this is just how the world works, so don't bother fighting it. And that's the real damage. One thing that I have heard from a lot of experts and other reporters in this field is like it's not just a problem of it all being in your head or even what you're seeing on TikTok. It's like in quote of whole real life in these offline settings, women will report that they are

treated better if they are thinner. People, strangers will treat them better. When you go to a restaurant, the waitstaff will treat you nicer. Potential future romantic partners might seek you out more or treat you nicer. And you'll be given more opportunities professionally a lot of times as a woman, the closer you adhere to the beauty standard. So this online culture, it's not creating eating disorders. It's responding to this culture that already existed. But what it's also doing is it's exponentially growing this culture. It's like it's becoming something that's so inescapable and so unavoidable.

And another interesting thing I picked up on within my conversations with other reporters who have been writing about this is that when we look at this content for extended periods of time when I watch dozens of skinny talk videos, when I spend hundreds of hours in these pro-eating disorder communities on platforms like X, I can feel the effect. Like, it's a very tangible, like, I can feel this and how bad it is for my mental health in a way that I've reported on, you know, violent misogyny. I've reported on political extremism, disinformation. I've gone into some of the darkest corners of the internet. But this stuff, It, like, it is affecting in a way that I previously haven't experienced.

Let's just say I can relate. I recently started making a few changes to support my own health, including getting into weightlifting. And just from showing a very casual interest in weightlifting online, my social feeds instantly got extreme. Suddenly, I was being shown content of women with incredibly lean bodies and all of these intense routines that they do to maintain those bodies. And honestly, I think it got in my head more than any kind of content ever has before. Something that you point to in your piece that I have

also seen with this content is how a lot of the creators who are pushing it, like I don't think that they would say, oh, this is pro eating disorder content or whatever. Sometimes they'll even say, well, I'm just being honest. You know, the culture that you just described where people who are thinner report, or if you lose a lot of weight, you report, you know, being treated nicer by at work, being treated nicer by the staff at a restaurant, all of that. What some of these creators are saying is, I'm just not sugar-coding it, I'm being honest with you, I'm giving you the truth. What do you say to that? You know, that's a great point. And this content does really fall on a spectrum because you have, like, the most extreme content that really is,

like, explicitly glorifying and advocating for disordered eating. And then you have this content like you just described that isn't saying like you should be you should be having an a game disorder it isn't saying you should be intersex or you should be binging and purging. So when you have these women, and it is overwhelmingly women, like you see it with some male influencers too. And I think that's really interesting and also concerning. But overwhelmingly like the skinny talk influencer, the archetype is this is a woman who is blonde, white, extremely thin, conventionally attractive, She lives in a beautiful apartment in New York City or another big city. And she's sitting there and she's telling you like, this is your path to winning and succeeding at life.

And it starts with you having a lot of times it's framed as self-control or being healthy. And as long as you reach this sort of sin ideal, then other opportunities will open up for you and you'll be happier and you'll be healthier and you'll be freer. And they may be starting at a point where like there's a kernel of truth to this. which is that then people are treated better in society. But rather than confront that or seek to push back against that status quo, what they're doing is they're really reinforcing and perpetuating that status quo and saying that it's the right thing to do. And a lot of times the way that you see this in the rhetoric that they share

is they'll talk about how over the past decade or so, there has been a social movement to push back against the beauty standard and thinness and disordered eating. And a lot of times that's called the body positivity movement or the body neutrality movement or like health at every size is another one of these movements. And these Skinny Talk influencers will actually attack and undermine these movements directly. And they'll say like it is unhealthy to be, it is unhealthy to be obese. These movements are promoting obesity.

They're promoting negative health outcomes. And that's not true. Like this carries into a misinformation. disinformation territory in which a lot of these creators are actively spreading very dangerous information around health because it is true that you can be healthy at any size. It is true that you don't need to adhere to the ultra-thin ideal to be healthy or happy. And in fact, if you go too far along that pathway of losing weight, you are unhealthy. It's sort of like this conversation and this reframing of thinness and health completely loses out on the fact

that eating disorders are incredibly dangerous and efforts to lose weight and maintain that extreme thinness that these influencers are selling, for most people, that's actually going to be much more unhealthy and lead to worse outcomes than if they maintained, like, their average weight or the weight that they feel most comfortable at. Is it the, like, mortality rate for eating disorders? It's like second highest of any mental issue you can experience. Yes, after drug abuse and drug addiction like heroin. Wow. Let's take a quick break.

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At our back. An adult can survive on just 500 calories a day. Restrictive diets are healthy. There's clean food and dirty food. Having fat on your body is always unhealthy. These are all lies that I see online all the time. They're medical misinformation, plain and simple. But because we live in a deeply fatphobic society, this kind of misinformation is often tolerated, even normalized.

It rarely gets treated with the same urgency or scrutiny as other kinds of false health claims. And that is a very serious problem. A lot of my work is grounded in the miss and disinformation space. And when it comes to health information specifically, so often it's like the conversation gets boiled down to like vaccine misinformation and things that seem, things that seem. things that they are things that are kind of you can talk about them from a certain specific kind of black white lens I feel less often are we talking about the way that content that glorifies extreme thinness and disorder of eating is just like genuinely health miss and disinformation right yes the idea that an a grown adult could could have their caloric intake

be like 800 or 900 calories what a child would eat that's not true there's just like Unless you are in some rare situation where you are working with a doctor for the majority of people, that's simply false. And if you're getting online and spreading a false message about people's health on the internet, I don't understand why we don't see that as a clear-cut misand-discinformation issue, the way that we do with other kinds of health mis and disinformation. Does that make sense? Absolutely. And one thing that's been really helpful for me over my reporting has been talking to nutritionists about what the truth really.

is. And I think you have kind of like a collapsing different degrees of failure outlay here, because there is sort of a lack of communication about what healthy eating and what a healthy body type is, generally speaking. I think most people in the public who are on platforms like TikTok or aren't even on platforms like TikTok have sort of a misguided understanding of what health and diet and exercise and beauty mean. Because for so many of us, for the vast majority of us, our knowledge of these topics is based on what we hear from other people in our lives and what we hear through mass media.

And those formats spread misinformation and disinformation. I look at how a lot of these like dieting and exercising tips, they are passed down from woman to woman through generations. You hear it from your mother. You hear it from your grandmother. You have the vaccine slogans going viral. on Skinny Talk today that were diet slogans being advertised to women in the 80s decades ago. It's just constantly recycling this same old messaging over and over again.

And ideally, social media platforms could be used to take real information coming from people like nutritionists and scientists and eating disorder providers. And you could take that and share that with the world. And I do think we're starting to see a little bit of that turn. When it comes to content that glorifies Disordered Eating, platforms like TikTok can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they can surface harmful content to users who might not have sought it out. But they can also be a source of support.

A place where people struggling can find connection, resources, and real hope. Creators like registered dietitian Michelle Pilipicch use TikTok to share accessible, judgment-free content about building a sustainable, healthy lifestyle. No diets or restrictions required. Welcome back to my series from Bad to Balanced, where I take the foods you think are bad and make them into a balanced meal. In your piece, you spoke to creators like Michelle Pillapich, who was a registered dietitian, who makes kind of anti-skinny talk content, almost sort of to retrain folks as brains against that kind of thinking. Do you see social media platforms almost as this double-edged sword where there are folks showing up to use the platform to glorify disorder to eating and extreme fitness? and also folks there who are using those same platforms to sort of retrain folks to say like,

hey, actually this isn't healthy, actually this is misinformation. Here's a better way to be thinking about it. Exactly. And I think that a lot of times, and you see this with eating disorders in particular, there's a lot of legislation and a lot of activism happening right now that's against social media. And oftentimes issues like eating disorders will be framed within this anti-social media activism as like we shouldn't let kids use social media because eating disorders are rising at a scary rate among teenagers and we think it's because of social media. So the answer here is to

just never let them use TikTok. But I really disagree with this because the way that I see it is that social media is a double-edged sword in the same way that it's been weaponized against progress. It could in fact be used for progress. And you see that with creators like Michelle, who like you said, she's a nutritionist who I interviewed, and she is so great, and she's such a good example of this, because she, what she did is she listened to her patients who were telling her about this messaging that they were hearing on platforms like TikTok. And she went on TikTok, and she started creating viral messaging in the opposite direction that was actually informing people about what healthy eating looks like, what health looks like, encouraging people to share

things that helped them recover from eating disorders instead of what encouraged them to go down this path. And her success, as well as other creators doing the same thing, looking at their success, the way that I see it is that we should actually be encouraging more speech around these topics on social media. Rather than looking at how we can limit this sort of speech, I think that putting more of it out there, giving people the information where they already are, reaching people where they are, I think is the way forward here. And the flip side of sort of these attempts to censor social media or moderate social media is that time and time again, platforms like Tumblr, Reddit, Instagram, TikTok, all of them, they've all made attempts to just ban pro eating disorder content. They've banned specific influencers.

They've banned entire communities. They've targeted types of rhetoric. And what we've always seen happen is that it just migrates to another platform. or just shapeships so that it can create a new form. So these efforts to stop this content in its tracks have not been successful. But what we are seeing some success with, I've spoken to some people who are young, who are on the pathway to recovery from eating disorders,

who found this content on social media that actually helped them. Trying to get social media platforms to curb this kind of content used to be my job. We compile examples to paint a bigger portrait, essentially saying, you all are not doing a good enough job keeping content that glorifies Disord Eating off of your platform. But what the leadership at these platforms often seem to hear was just take down these specific bad posts.

They rarely engage with a deeper issue of why this kind of content keeps showing up in the first place or how to stop it long term. It was incredibly frustrating. So I want to talk about that a little bit. In a former life, I worked in the sort of platform advocacy space. And so Skinny Talk, I personally met with, like, leaders from TikTok to bring corners of Skinny Talk to their attention. And what is interesting is, I agree with you. I think that the leaders at these platforms at least did tell me, like, oh, we are interested in stamping out this kind of content.

It goes against our terms of service. They would ban the hashtag Skinny Talk. Sometimes within hours, it would be like Skinny Talk, but spelled out with ones or something. or like the way that creators would find a way around whatever kind of fan or whatever kind of moderation these platforms would roll out, it made me think, I don't know if this is actually something that they can eradicate from their platforms. And you're saying that like,

well, maybe they shouldn't even be focusing on that. Instead, they should be focusing on bringing people who are able to make content around the other side of like what, you know, what actually is healthy eating and like thinking about things a little bit differently. that actually might be more effective. I think so. And I think that you can have a little bit of both.

When I've done this reporting on these really extreme pro-eating disorder communities on platforms like X, I do think that there absolutely is a line where you do need to be moderating these communities. And I think it's a good thing that in response to some of my previous reporting, like X came in and checked down some of these communities. And they popped back up again and they started growing again. But I do think that shutting down that community, that really toxic space, it was helpful because it did at least stop the growth of some of these massive communities in their tracks. So I don't think it is a complete, like, net negative or positive in one direction of the other. I do think some moderation still needs to happen.

But I think looking at sort of the longer term issue, it's clear that we cannot solve this problem just by like trying to ignore it or stamp it out or censor it. we have got to address it head on, and we have to make that connection between what is happening in these online spaces and what happens offline. Because offline, the messaging is all too familiar. When you are walking down the street in New York City and you see the billboards and you see the people around you, you begin to understand that thinness and the types of things that are preached about on Skinny Talk are not just an online issue. This is a reflection and a mirror distortion of the world that we live in and have honestly lived in for quite some time. We can't really talk about Skinny Talk without talking about Liv Schmidt. Before she was banned,

Liv built a massive following with TikTok videos that kind of looked like wellness, you know, pastel smoothies, 4-I.M workouts, tiny meals in perfect lighting. But beneath that aesthetic was something darker, a steady stream of content that promoted disordered eating and a toxic obsession with thinness. She became the poster child for a certain kind of that girl content. The kind of the algorithm devours. And she took it even further by creating a paid subscriber only platform called Skinny Society, where women and girls, as young as high schoolers, traded restrictive eating tips and competed over restrictive eating practices. When the backlash came, it wasn't the platform that stepped in first. It was the users, calling out how content-like lives pushed harmful

ideals to millions, especially young women and girls. After a critical piece in the cut, Liv's TikTok page was banned, so she moved to Instagram, where her content has been demonetized. Her account may be gone from TikTok, but her influence, well, that's still everywhere. I know that comes harsh, but it's just you're in charge of your lifestyle, and it shows. And so, yeah, being skinny is like the literal new Birken. So do you want to be a Birken? or do you want to be a thrift store back? What do you make of the fact that people are able to monetize this, make a business out of this?

Yes. This, to me, is a really concerning sort of evolution of like the pro-eating disorder space is the ability for influencers to build these monetizable followings because that's something that you didn't necessarily see on Tumblr in like the late odds or the early 2010s. Over the past 10 years, as social media has become so much more all-encompassing, as more people have spent more time on social media, as it's wormed its way into every facet of our lives, you've also seen the ability to make money from social media grow exponentially.

And so it's not a surprising trend that you're seeing this in the eating disorder space, but I find these communities to be like particularly concerning. Because when you're paying for something and when you're being put in these, now like more private spaces with like-minded people, that is such a strong conduit for more and more and more extreme thought. And as a result of that reporting in the cut, Instagram demonetized Liv Schmit's like sort of page. But every time I go on Instagram, every time I go on Instagram reels, which is like a button on your page that you're going to hit accidentally even if you don't mean to go to it, I am bombarded with Liv Schmit's content to this day. Every time.

Every day. And it's just like I, it's unavoidable. It's inescapable. And there's something very compelling about what she does where it's like I find myself almost unable to look away. More after a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guide, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smigel and friends.

Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and Head. writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. There's the worst singer in the group. The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the

idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle age,

one erection. Listen to humor. me with Robert Smygel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Human me! I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined.

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It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast Point Game is about defying the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we're. we've never seen before. And he knows.

Without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid.

He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nass would get that thing. That man, hell get the flying.

He running up the court, licking his fingers, why he got the ball. Like, after you go through a training camp with that, I say, you figure it out real quick. Oh, yeah. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the ball. So listen to Point Game on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jared Adano. You might know me as that loud guy who yells out, help on the internet.

Help! Somebody! But there's so much more to me than that. I'm an actor. I'm a comedian. and recently I've become quite the helper myself. And on my new podcast, Hope from a Hypocrite, I'll be changing lives, helping people in need with my sage advice and thoughtful solutions.

Sike, I'm a comedian. I'm not qualified to give good advice. Join me and my comedian friends as we riff, rant, recommend some of the most legally dubious advice known to man. If I'm calling you, even if you're on your phone, let it ring twice. One ring is too skinny. Carrie.

Cream of chicken suit. Hey, cream. Cream a chicken suit. This is Help from a Hypocrite, the worst advice from the dumbest people you know. Listen to Help from Hypocrite as part of the MyCultura podcast network available on the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it. Well, something that you said that really reminded me of Live is how when folks are kicked off of one platform who are making this kind of content or demonetized or moderated in some way.

She will say things like, oh, I was banned from TikTok for spreading the truth about, you know, that they don't want you to know. Like, I'm just being honest and people can't handle it. She has made being moderated off of TikTok and having to like pop up on Instagram and then being demonetized there, almost like a like a branding thing of like, don't you want to know what I'm saying that is too real for the Instagram sensors? Yes, and it is like that kind of rhetoric is unmistakably similar to what you see from like the alt-right and what you see from conservatives who have similarly mastered these online landscapes. They all use really similar rhetoric.

And I think that part of the larger picture here that I also think has been kind of unexplored is that it's no coincidence that you see rising conservatism, dominating online spaces and the offline. world, you see rising authoritarianism around the globe, at the same time that you see this massive resurgence of pro-eating disorder and just content that glorifies extreme thinness for women, these movements are connected. And Michelle Pillovich, the nutritionist, actually recently did a post about this, where she was like, if you are against Trump, like, you, and you are a woman and you oppose sort of the modern conservative party, you should be nourishing your body, you should be eating enough food because the ultimate goal of these sort of conservative, very misogynistic spaces is that they want women to be small.

They want women to take up less space. They want them to be frail, unable to help themselves, and they want them to be very preoccupied with their own appearance because it becomes an obsession that distracts from you being able to participate in democracy to the fullest extent. It's a distraction that prevents women from being able to occupy the same positions that men do. So this sort of pro-eating disorder content is part of this larger picture of women's oppression. And it's just no coincidence that like the influencers in the all right spaces and the influencers in the skinny spaces are using the exact same types of strategies. So I clock this all the time on social media. And I feel like whenever someone says it out loud, just the comments are like, what are you talking about? You're crazy.

And I mean, I'll see content that's like, you know, glorified. It's not just being thin. It's thin, longed, rich, partnered, sometimes like quiet and subservient. Like it's just like, like when you pull apart the kind of things that they're saying goes along with like the good life in scare quotes that will become available to you if you are first thin. It really is like it becomes very clear that this is about a very oppressive vision of the future where women are quiet, frail, not really participating fully. in public and civic life? Like, it all goes together. It does. It does.

And a lot of times when you have these skinny talk influencers, they will talk about, like, like Liv Schmidt talks about this. She's like, you need to be having fun. You need to be living like a full, fulfilling lifestyle. But what she's modeling and what she's showing us the example of that is that she is like a model. So she's telling women that they should aspire to their currency

and their worth and their value being their appearance. And part of the flip side of this, that's very unfortunate, both for Liv Schmidt as an individual and for all of the women and girls who she's influencing, is that no matter how skinny you are, no matter how much you are able to adhere to this beauty standard in your youth, you will age out. There's no future for you if your entire worth and being is rooted in how you look as a young conventionally attractive person. And that is really unfortunate because I think that along the way women and girls are going to look. that these types of expectations and these types of standards are built purposefully to be something that can never be truly met and never truly last. Is this such a productive way to think about what we were put on this planet to do? Yeah. To obsess about our weight and the way that we look. Yes, yes.

And you see this sort of rhetoric carryover into the obsession around anti-aging. And you have like billionaires who are investing. so much of their time and energy and money into trying to literally stop the passage of time. And it's like it's all connected because the modern conservative movement is rhetoric that is about making a return to when America was quote great, making a return to your childhood to sort of the American idealism that never truly existed, but you can just pretend that it was in the past and it's something that we can go back to. And the beauty standard and this ideal of thinness fits into that.

perfectly because it's something that's sold as an attainable ideal that you can never actually truly get there. When you go down this path of self-optimization or trying to stop aging or trying to constantly fit the ever-shifting beauty standard, it's not something you can win. No, absolutely not. And yeah, I agree with you. I don't think it's a surprise that we have these rising influencers saying the best than you can be is hot, rich, thin, and mean and the rise of this like concern this new conservative ideology. Yes. Yes. And people want to create this distinction, this differentiation between what they view as like capital P politics, very serious. Like what's happening in Congress? What are the actual policies? What's the bill of

the text? The text of the law. But in reality, what the vast majority of people are interested in is not capital P politics, but rather capital C culture. And people on the right understand. And people on the right understand this. I think it was Steve Bannon who said that politics is downstream of culture. And that was part of the key to unlocking Trump's wide stream of like a wider appeal was creating this like cultural image around him that then became a totem that his voters could project their desires onto. And you see the same thing happening with within the influencer space, within the social media space is that conservatism, it doesn't have as much to do with who's in office or what they are doing in their position as elected officials, as it has to do with what is the

dominating culture? What is everyone spending their time doing? What is the, what are the goals and the aspirations of the public? And this has a powerful political connotation, and it's not frivolous at all. It translates over to how people show up and how they vote in the ballot box at elections. Things like patriarchy and rigid gender roles don't just harm women and girls. They hurt everyone. Online, young men are also being fed pretty toxic messages about how they need to look to be successful. Many are being pushed into a practice known as looks maxing, a movement that encourages extreme physical self-optimization in the name of male attractiveness.

For folks who have never heard that word before, what is looks maxing? So looks maxing is kind of like the male version of this that I alluded to a little bit earlier. And I find this really interesting. And it's really sad. I spoke to this young man named Stephen Ima, who is a college student in Texas, and he's this young black man who has since pivoted his content into anti-looks maxing and anti-eating disorders. But he initially fell down the rabbit hole. And so what looks maxing is, is it's a beauty standard for men that is being sold, again, as this, like, attainable thing where if you just do these like facial exercises and if you just copy all. of these like tips and tricks, then you will be able to fit the male beauty ideal. You will be muscular. You will have very

defined like jawline and cheekbones. And it looks really bizarre on the surface to people who aren't familiar with this subculture. And it gets mocked and made fun of a lot because it will literally be like, you have to suck in your cheeks so that you can have like the most pronounced cheekbones possible. Or like there was an article about how some of the people in the looks maxing communicate, in the looks maxing community were advocating like hammering your face into the position that you wanted it to be in. It's, it's alarming. And I, but what's concerning about it to me also is that you see the exact same sort of behaviors within the extreme pro eating disorder spaces, like the extreme calorie deficits. That's a mirror happening for for boys and young men. And

or for, yeah, for boys and men. And when I talked to Stephen, one thing that he told me is, like, this community sold this, like, fake promise to him that if he just did all of these things, he would have more success with women, and he would be happier and his life would be better. But when he got into that community, as a young black man, he realized that it was incredibly racist. And this was ultimately the thing that broke him out of it was he was like, there's no place for me within this community if I'm not white. and that understanding unlocked kind of like a new perspective where he was like, this whole thing is built on lies and fabrications. And it's just about harming yourself ultimately. I think eating disorders are kind of a form of self-harm. And so within the looks maxing community and within other parts of this online culture, you see this desire to control and restrict and hurt yourself. And that's sold to you as like how your life becomes better, how you become more disciplined, how you experience more success. But for, for you. the people who are trapped within these communities, it is a very toxic cycle of actually beating down their self-worth and actually feeling worse about how they look and maybe using some fixed some part of how you look, but now you've identified all of the other things that

need fixing. So it's really bad for self-esteem. And I think it also, over time, produces worse outcomes in terms of healthy living. Do you see all of this getting better or getting worse? what we often see when we pick up on these big cultural shifts is that things get a little worse, but then ultimately they do get better. Like I think things, we're on the pathway for things to continue getting worse as of right now, but the fact that you have people picking up on this

and realizing it is a sign that the pendulum will swing back. And I do believe that the pendulum will swing back, but I think that it takes within this platform environment that these social media companies have created for us to examine, exist within, you have to build up so much momentum for the algorithm to redirect itself in any new direction. And right now, all of that momentum is being built up behind things like Skinny Talk. So it's going to take a lot of people speaking out against this and making content in opposition for this before the major platform landscapes begin to reflect sort of the

opposition. But I do have fake that we'll get there. Yeah, I just recently decided, I started weightlifting for the first time a couple years, a couple months ago. And just like, again, I'm not, I'm not interested in losing weight. I'm not interested. I'm just interested in learning about weightlifting as a beginner weightlifter. The way that my, none of my algorithms will ever be the same. Like, like, the stuff that, the stuff that Instagram now is convinced that I want to see simply because I am interested in weightlifting is like, oh, suddenly you're anti-vax.

I'm like, wait, what? Like, like the way, like, my algorithm will never be the same. I know. I know I'm in the exact same boat. I've spent so many months reporting on like eating disorders that every social media platform is now convinced that I am part of this like rabbit hole cycle. And that is worrying to me because although the average social media user is not a journalist studying these things for months at a time, I feel like I'm living what someone who's being on the pathway to being radicalized is seeing on their social media feeds. And if this is what a lot of people are seeing on

there's social media beads, that's so concerning because there's just nothing healthy about being bombarded with hours worth of this content on a daily basis. And as we were talking about before, if we are looking at this content with a critical eye, and like, it still gets me. I have to like catch myself saying, actually, you don't want your body to look like this. Or like, actually, that's not a reasonable amount of calories for an adult woman to be eating. Like, come on. If that's how it's kidding me as somebody who was looking at this from a critical eye, imagine somebody who is just scrolling or somebody who was very young. Yes, yes. If I, I can't even imagine having a kid in this current social media landscape, but if I did, I feel like if I were parent, I would want

to be having honestly like daily conversations like with my child about this to try to push back against some of the narratives that they will inevitably be hearing not only online, but in their classrooms among their friends and their peers from older relatives or from people in their community like these messages around thinness and weight and health and beauty are so pervasive and it takes so much work to even begin to break through on a personal level and fight back against them. Is that what you would suggest parents should be doing like really having conversations intentionally with the young people in their life and maybe doing some internal recalibration of the way that they internally think about these issues?

Yes, one million percent. I think one of the biggest things is that when you are in a position of influencing someone else, whether you're a parent, whether you're someone who does have a big social media following, or even just in the way you interact with everyone around you, it's like you do have to do that self-introspection to be like, what sort of negative and toxic and harmful ideologies do I have to work on? And what am I projecting to the people around me? what am I modeling to the people around me?

This can be something as simple as when you grow up and your mom looks in the mirror and is like, I hate this about myself or when your mother or when your parental figure is constantly talking about, because dads do this too, constantly talking about like, I need to lose weight, I need to go on a diet, I hate the way that I look. You're modeling to your kids and to the people who look up to you and who are around you that you should constantly be self-critical and that you should constantly be in this state of working on yourself. And I think that that is one of the most insidious aspects of diet culture is that it occupies so much of our time, energy, attention, money, and lifestyle to trying to reach this unattainable ideal.

So I think that's something that we could all do is sort of do that introspection about the ways that we carry diet culture into our lives and how that might be affecting the people around us. If someone out there listening needs help with all of this, what can they do? If you are struggling with this or if this content has been having an effect on you, there are lots of resources out there. There are more mental health professionals and supports out there than ever. So never think that you won't be able to get help or that it's too late for you. There are always resources and things that you can do to make things better. If you're looking for support, check out Project Heal, an organization with the mission to break down systemic, health care, and financial barriers to eating disorder healing. Check them out at theprojectheel.org.

Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangoati.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoity. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of IHeartRadio and unbossed creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer.

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Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano. It's our favorite time of the year on our podcast point game, the playoffs. We're digging into the biggest surprises of the season. And I'm looking back on some of my greatest playoff moments. If we didn't talk ever again, I was funny. You just understood. That's how personal it got. Wow. Then after that game seven, Marquis come until he's like, you know I love you, dog. You know, it's all love. This was just playoffs. This was just. basketball. So listen to Point Game on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. Hi everyone. I'm Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things. I'm excited to share that I have a new podcast called Mind Over Mountain. In each episode, I interview athletes, adventurers, and adrenaline seekers to discuss the inner landscapes that informed and inspired their extraordinary feats. So we too can better understand how to face our own seemingly insurmountable challenges. to Mind Over Mountain every Thursday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There are times when the mind becomes a difficult place to live. This is David Eagleman with the Inner Cosmos podcast, and for Mental Health Awareness Month, we'll talk with singer-songwriter Jewel about

anxiety. I started living in my car and then my car got stolen. I was having panic attacks. I was agoraphobic. This is a month of deeply personal and honest conversations about what happens when the brain goes off course. Listen to Intercosmos on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHart podcast. Guaranteed human.