#skinnytok is the new pro-ana

restriction is back in style

If you were active on Tumblr in the 2013-2014 period, you probably remember the vicious community that took over the darkest parts of the platform: the pro-ana girls. And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, let me explain it to you.

Pro-ana stands for pro-anorexia. Tumblr’s previous lack of restriction allowed for all kinds of heinous things to go on in the shadows. Pro-ana was a collective group of pre-teen to teenage girls, all encouraging each other to starve themselves under the guise of friendship and community.

They used “inspirational” quotes: what you eat in private, you wear in public. They shared fatspo, body-shaming other girls and using them as examples of their biggest fear. They gave dieting tips — stick to rice cakes, use a flavored EOS lip balm if you’re too hungry. They grieved about hidden calories in gum or medication. They were lost and desperate for control, contributing to each other’s illnesses. Tumblr was their bible and “Ana” was their God.

If this is your first time hearing of the group, I envy you. For a brief time during 8th grade, I found myself attached to the pro-ana community. I would revisit the content again and again until I was eighteen. Their inspirational photos devoured my camera roll, with three daily reminders to skip breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I became a devoted user of restriction-tracking apps and MyFitnessPal. The content was easily accessible, and someone was always producing more.

I didn’t last long, though. I was called “wannarexic” (wannabe anorexic — I wasn’t dedicated enough to my starvation rituals, you know, being a middle schooler and all), and was bullied out of the community. The girls were tired, hungry, and mean. But they did me a favor, cutting me off from the source that would lead to the destruction of both me and so many other young girls.

I want to emphasize that this wasn’t a niche community — there wasn’t only a handful of us — one search of the term and you’ll find so many published books, thorough academic essays, think-pieces, and videos dissecting the users and their content.

One of my favorites is “Dead Weight” by Emmeline Clein, a woman who had an experience so identical to mine, it’s likely we interacted. In her book, Clein says, “It’s a risky era, stretchy and interminable. It doesn’t always end. That ever-gnawing void can make you want a body to match, one that looks as hungry as your heart is. Sobbing and throbbing, a lot of the most beloved icons of girl culture are very, very sad, and very, very skinny,” as well as “If you’ve survived the kind of girlhood I’ve been trying to describe here, I hope you’ll let me call you my sister.” She emphasizes how eating disorders have been so normalized, it’s almost expected that a young girl encounters such an experience, as if it’s as ordinary as puberty.

Now, I’m approaching 24 and more healed from my eating disorder than I’ve ever been. I’m re-establishing my relationship with my body and the voice inside my head. It’s been a long road, but while I look back, it seems essential to talk about my experiences. I’ll recount every horrible memory if it means I can convince another young girl not to lose birthday celebrations and special dinners to numbers on a scale — or worse — for the praise of miserable strangers behind a screen.

Skinnytok is as ridiculous as it sounds, but when 1 in 50 adolescent girls will develop an eating disorder¹, we must dissect a very major catalyst: social media.

Of course, 2000s trends routinely find their way back into the mainstream, but the most damaging one of all has morphed into something larger, rebranding itself and taking over a larger platform: Skinnytok. Pro-ana is back, unrestricted, in our faces, and stronger than ever.

According to research conducted by Science Alert, young girls are more likely to be shown diet-related content on TikTok. Only 8 minutes of exposure to this content that focuses on dieting, weight loss, and exercise results in an immediate negative effect on body image satisfaction.²

That same toxic self-talk that lies under the label of pro-ana has crept onto our screens once again. Remember the brief period of body positivity? Yeah, that’s over. Now, fatphobic content is as free and as popular as it’s ever been.

After using TikTok for the first time in over 3 years, I was immediately exposed to girls turning sideways and showing their waists, not directly promoting diet culture, but displaying their features enough to get thousands of comments saying “i’m never eating again” and “where do her organs go?”

Similarly, it seems that the pride of being a “girl’s girl” is in the past now, especially when I see TikTok’s that say, “I don’t care if he changed for you, I said let’s go waist for waist” (horrifying), as well as hundreds of videos talking about how their “morning skinny” is the highlight of their day.

This is quite literally the same language we saw on Tumblr over a decade ago, disguised as “what I eat in a day” videos alongside the quiet promotion of appetite suppressants and restriction. Just like thinspo and fatspo, this “tough love” rhetoric has created a whole new line of ways to torture yourself, such as: “In the middle of the night, when you get hungry, chew on your pillow instead,” “You don’t need a treat. You’re not a dog,” and “Walk 10 steps to the kitchen and eat less.”

Pro-ana is now repeating itself with another generation of young, impressionable girls.

Where do we go from here? While it feels like the world is falling apart around us, it seems easy to throw in the towel on anything productive, such as the body positivity movement.

Pro-ana isn’t some invisible monster. A major corporation lies at the existence of Skinnytok, and if this content produces interaction on their app, they couldn’t care less about the well-being of their users. Maybe we need to dismantle the CEO’s who blatantly target these young girls under the mask of “wellness culture.” Maybe we all need to throw our phones away. Maybe none of this will happen, because society is a blood-sucking vampire fueled by women’s pain.

If we want to address the main enabler of pro-ana and #skinnytok, we will have to dismantle the beliefs that lie at the root of society. We will have to talk about our granola moms, about the way that girls compete with each other, about the way that we are encouraged to view ourselves. We will have to burn the entire system down just to rebuild it again. But for now, get the fuck off of TikTok, practice being nice to yourself, and enjoy a slice of cake.

1. https://www.verywellhealth.com/eating-disorder-facts-5324263

2. https://www.sciencealert.com/8-minutes-on-tiktok-is-enough-to-harm-body-image-in-young-women