The Return of “SkinnyTok”: Why Are We Still Chasing the Summer Body in 2025?

Tiny meals, clean eating, work-out routines, I thought it was self-improvement. The algorithm called it “wellness.” Calorie counts dressed as glow-ups, hunger framed as empowerment, it mirrored the quiet rituals I’d already normalised. Only now, they were fed to me on autoplay by an algorithm that knew exactly where to hit.

TikTok has since blocked searches for “SkinnyTok,” a hashtag critics say promotes content that “idolises extreme thinness.” Users are now redirected to mental health resources. But banning a hashtag isn’t the same as banning the message.

It didn’t disappear. It was rebranded. “Balance.” “Gut health.” “Glow-up.” The same pressure, softened. The same question, whispered through filters: How much smaller can you make yourself to be worthy? Diet culture hasn’t died. It’s evolved. and it’s still profiting while women and girls' confidence disappears under the weight of it.

What is “SkinnyTok”?

“SkinnyTok” is the rebranded face of diet culture on TikTok, dressed in “wellness,” sold as “self-improvement,” but still obsessed with thinness. It’s low-calorie meal plans, glow-up edits, body checks, and “what I eat in a day” videos, all quietly reinforcing the same message: shrink yourself to be worthy.

The National Alliance for Eating Disorders says the hashtag has appeared in over half a million posts, many promoting disordered eating and weight stigma. On the surface? Lifestyle tips. Underneath? Calorie obsession. Food guilt. Fear of weight gain.

For me, someone who lives with body dysmorphia and years of severe insecurity, TikTok has become a minefield. I don’t search for this content. It finds me. One scroll and I’m pulled back into patterns I’ve fought hard to unlearn. Banning the hashtag means nothing when the message lives in your feed, and worse, in your head.

The Ban of “SkinnyTok”

Search “SkinnyTok” now and you’re redirected to mental health support resources. TikTok has banned the hashtag, but the content hasn’t disappeared.

Tom Quinn from the eating disorder charity, Beat, welcomed the move, saying “Skinnytok” and related content could have “devastating” impacts on “struggling” people. But he warned there’s still more to be done:

“We know that users will very often find workarounds to content blocks and there will still be damaging content which isn't shared under the “Skinnytok” umbrella, which TikTok and other social media platforms must now address.”

And he’s right. As I kept researching, it was obvious, the hashtag is gone, but the message is still everywhere.

Diet Culture Thrives Beyond the Hashtag

Search “wellness” on TikTok and you’ll find weight-loss challenges like 75 Hard, 75 days of strict dieting, no alcohol and extreme fitness, alongside toxic mantras like “Would you still eat that if it was being recorded?” This isn’t wellness. It’s cruelty dressed as discipline. It’s a marketplace profiting off insecurity.

True wellness should mean holistic health: reading more, going outside, mental health support. But TikTok’s version? Just another filtered face of self-surveillance.

Search “glow-up” and it’s the same story. Weight-loss transformations. “Become unrecognisable this summer.” School-aged girls sharing their post-secondary school glow-ups. When did shrinking become synonymous with evolving?

Weight loss can be part of a health journey, but this? Rapid, extreme, aesthetic-driven change passed off as empowerment? It's not health. It’s harm.

And on my own For You Page on TikTok?

• A ChatGPT-generated “glow-up plan” with weight loss front and centre.

• Before-and-after body “glow-ups.”

• Love Islanders showing off their “villa prep”: Botox, filler, hair extensions.

• “How to be THAT woman,” by dressing “like you respect yourself.”

• A woman crying, ashamed to be “in the 80s,” referencing her weight.

• A top tip: “If you eat less, you’ll lose WEIGHT.” Accompanied with a woman on a treadmill.

  
  

These videos weren’t banned with the hashtag. The algorithm learns what makes you insecure, then feeds it back to you, dressed as motivation. And no, you can’t stop it. You consume it. 

The algorithm doesn’t care about your health

Eve Jones, 23, from Cardiff, deleted the app altogether, she said:

“Once you interact with one post like that, your feed is flooded with it so quickly,”

As a recovering anorexia patient, Jones described the content as promoting "detrimental and disordered" eating. Jones continued:

“I'm lucky to be in a position where I have had my treatment and I know how to avoid my triggers, but people on the other side of this won't be aware of that."

Jones isn’t alone. A 2024 University College London study found social media use among young people aged 10–24 is strongly linked to body dissatisfaction and disordered eating. Lead researcher Dr Alexandra Dane called it an “emerging global public health issue.”

And still, the algorithm encourages restriction. Posts that push impossible beauty standards get more engagement, and more ad revenue.

Alexandra Dane, lead researcher, said social media platforms enabled young people to constantly compare their appearance to others. Which Dane said can:

"encourage young people to view themselves as objects that should be judged based on their appearance."

Even as someone trying to heal my relationship with food,  I caught myself slipping, saving low-calorie breakfast ideas I knew I had no business revisiting. That’s the thing about this kind of content: it doesn’t care if you’re healing. It reminds you that your worth, your hunger, your wellbeing mean nothing if they don’t fit the aesthetic.

Body positivity struggles to break through

There are creators fighting back. Wellness influencer Kate Glavan, who has nearly 150,000 followers, is one of them. She warned:

"A lot of creators are explicitly promoting anorexia to their audience. It's dangerous. It's misinformed. Block these creators."

I tried. I followed body-positive accounts, hit “not interested,” reported harmful videos for promoting “disordered eating and unhealthy body image.” But the algorithm doesn’t forget what triggers you, it feeds off it.

The truth? Body-positive content rarely goes viral. It’s not as clickable. Not as marketable. TikTok says it’s boosting safety filters and adding wellbeing resources. Critics say it’s not nearly enough.

Megan Jayne Crabbe, author of We Don’t Make Ourselves Smaller Here, said:

"I think banning the hashtag is a surface-level plaster to a very deep wound. We are still deeply fatphobic as a society.”

And that resonates with me, I still hesitate in a bikini unless I’ve "earned" it. That’s not body positivity. That’s control dressed up as wellness. And deep down, I know it.

Why does thin still equal worth?

Even with content warnings and blocked hashtags, we haven’t reckoned with the core issue: why does thinness still equal discipline, success, and desirability? Why are we still selling the "summer body" as something to be earned, not something you already have?

We see progress in pockets, campaigns for body neutrality, plus-size representation, open conversations about disordered eating. But they fight for space in a society designed to reward the opposite.

It’s time to say enough

We deserve platforms that prioritise mental health over profit. We deserve algorithms that don't feed eating disorders back to the people most vulnerable. We deserve to be seen as more than a body to shrink.

We cannot keep selling the summer body at the expense of women and girls’ wellbeing. It’s time to stop pretending that “clean” eating and “wellness” trends are harmless. They’re not. And it’s okay to log off, opt out, and reject it altogether.

Logging off was the best thing I did for my mental and physical health this year. Not because I stopped caring about my body, but because I stopped punishing it. Follow body positive creators, block anything that makes you feel otherwise. 

Let’s stop shrinking ourselves to fit someone else’s algorithm.