From SkinnyTok to Ozempic: Unpacking Body Image in a Culture That Can’t Stop Looking

The online world we live in today is littered with diet culture traps, subtle and overt, designed to make us scrutinize, shrink, and reshape our bodies. From “SkinnyTok” to the rising popularity of weight-loss injections like Ozempic, 2025 has seen diet culture evolve into something even more insidious than before. It’s no longer just a revival of the toxic trends from the 1990s and 2000s; it’s diet culture 3.0 – moving faster, louder, and more pervasive.

TikTok’s toxic body image trends

The ubiquity of body checking, where users post videos showcasing their bodies from various angles, has become a normalized part of scrolling on TikTok. Phrases like “skinny legend,” once an ironic term embraced by queer communities, are now widespread and often used uncritically. “What I eat in a day” (WIEIAD) videos have become a content mainstay, and the associated hashtag has amassed an estimated 17 billion views. These videos often portray restrictive eating patterns under the guise of “wellness,” reinforcing the idea that food must be earned or that thinness is the ultimate health goal.

The billion-dollar business of body dysmorphia

Diet culture thrives because it is incredibly profitable. It is supported by a capitalist system that benefits from our insecurities. An estimated 45 million Americans go on diets each year, collectively spending over $30 billion on weight-loss products and programs. Despite these staggering numbers, research shows that 95% of diets fail; though calling a diet a “failure” implies it was ever meant to succeed for the individual. In reality, diets are designed to be unsustainable. Their real purpose is not to improve health, but to keep consumers in a loop of dependency, always reaching for the next solution. And paying for it.

Megan Jayne Crabbe, author of Body Positive Power, writes powerfully about this cycle:

"It's genius, really: saturate the media with ideal bodies, convince women that they can only be happy if they look like those bodies, sell women products promising to give them those bodies, and when those products don't work, tell the women that it's their fault for not having enough willpower, and sell them more. If women begin to achieve the current ideal body, change the ideal so that they'll need to keep buying products (that don't work) to attain the impossible... And all along the whole thing rests on that one big lie: that your body needs to look a certain way in order for you to be happy. We bought it. We still buy it.”

From dieting to disordered eating 

This system isn’t just emotionally manipulative, it’s dangerous. According to a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics, teens and young adults who engaged in moderate dieting were five times more likely to develop an eating disorder. Those who practiced extreme dieting were 18 times more likely. These aren’t just numbers; they’re real lives impacted by a culture that equates thinness with value, discipline, and success.

Writer Roxane Gay put it simply and powerfully in her memoir Hunger: “It is a powerful lie to equate thinness with self-worth.” Yet that lie is embedded deeply in our media, our schools, our families, and now - more than ever - in our social media feeds. TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube are filled with content that promotes not just thinness, but a narrow, often Eurocentric beauty standard that excludes most body types, races, and marginalized genders.  

The psychological toll of the algorithm

For those already vulnerable to body image issues, social media can be like pouring gasoline on a fire. Lucy*, a 22-year-old from the UK, shares how platforms like TikTok worsened her body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). “I have BDD and OCD. They often go hand in hand, but I believe that my dysphoric feelings around my body are learned, not natural or genetic or anything,” she says. In her teen years, Lucy spent seven to eight hours a day online. “I was constantly seeing harmful messages about thinness. I regularly see girls commenting things like, ‘a size 8 is plus-size.’ It’s so warped. For someone like me, who already struggles to see my body clearly, it just makes it worse.”

Lucy’s story is far from unique. A study led by Charles Sturt University highlighted the real psychological toll of TikTok content on young women. Researchers surveyed 273 women between the ages of 18 and 28, asking about their views on body image and beauty standards. The participants were then split into two groups, each shown an eight-minute compilation of TikTok videos. Afterward, both groups reported a noticeable drop in body image satisfaction. However, the group that viewed pro-anorexia content experienced the sharpest decline and showed an increased internalization of unrealistic beauty standards.

It’s not just the content itself that’s dangerous, it’s how quickly and frequently it appears. The TikTok algorithm is designed to show users more content they engage with. If you watch just one “what I eat in a day” video, your For You Page can quickly become flooded with similar content, some of which is subtle but deeply damaging. This creates a feedback loop that can be difficult to break, especially for younger users who are still forming their sense of identity and self-worth.

Establishing guardrails on diet culture 

Despite growing awareness, there’s still a massive gap in how we address body image issues at the societal level. Schools rarely teach media literacy that includes critical thinking about beauty ideals. Medical institutions often reinforce fatphobia by equating weight with health. Even well-meaning “wellness” influencers often perpetuate diet culture under the guise of self-improvement.

So what can be done? Young people (and adults) should be taught to question the content they consume, understand the filters and editing that go into what they see, and recognize the financial motivations behind influencer culture.

We also need broader, systemic change. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram should take more responsibility for the content they promote, especially when it comes to eating disorders and body image. Trigger warnings, better moderation, and algorithmic adjustments could make a significant difference. TikTok recently banned SkinnyTok, but frankly, they were more than a year late in doing so – and just because the hashtag is removed, doesn’t mean the content won’t persist.

The politics of body image

Lastly, we have to unlearn what diet culture has taught us, and that takes time. Healing from these harmful messages isn’t a linear process, and it requires compassion for both ourselves and others.

In a culture that can’t stop looking, disengaging is a powerful tool. Because diet culture is not just harming us individually, it’s stripping us of community and influencing our politics. 

In an article for Open Democracy, Lois Shearing spoke to Hazel Woodrow, a researcher at Anti-Hate Canada who focuses on digital subcultures of teenage girls, including pro-anorexia and far-right extremist communities, summarised it well: “If I was trying to radicalise a young girl, I would incite an eating disorder, because your capacity of critical thought is kneecapped by starvation, and it would be easy to introduce a racialised aspect to it.”