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The Essay's story will be about my struggles with an Eating disorder from a young age all the way up until now. It will talk about my struggles in life and how it destroyed me. I will talk about how during covid my eating disorder worsened and how it only got worse because of the media. It will then go to the major issue of the normalization of eating disorders and how media portray it as a good thing

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Case Study ON EDO AND ANOREXIA BEHAVIORS

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Case Study ON EDO AND ANOREXIA BEHAVIORS

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I found this very interesting for a few reasons. It had case study of people who dealt with eating disorders. It also talked about the causes and relapses that may happen when somebody has an eating disorder! It also has many great cites!

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This is super important because it's a prime example of normalization media. We see the normalization through popular influencers. We can see the side effects and how it's super negative! We can also see how tiktok does nothing to stop it and how influencer continue to normalize this on the platform!

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*Content Warning - Eating Disorders: This article discusses language around eating disorders and weight loss in online spaces like the app TikTok.*
, a social media platform that gained popularity in 2019 and picked up traction with college-aged students at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, on the surface is a seemingly innocent app that fosters an environment of creativity and fun. However, users familiar with the popularity of food and weight related content have seen how unhealthy attitudes can be perpetrated on the app easily and quickly.

Eating disorders have been heavily normalized in teen and college culture through the language we use around body image and weight loss. Casually bringing up how little you ate today or commenting on someone's weight is commonplace amongst young adults. In college, students will often discuss not eating to "cancel out" the calories from going out or because of the outfit they plan to wear later, and will normalize vocabulary like "pulling trig", an eating disorder tendency that has been trivialized in college settings.

This language has expanded to online platforms, like TikTok, and is incredibly harmful to impressionable users, as well as people who are developing, suffering from, or recovering from an eating disorder. The posts of popular creators, who tend to be thin and toned, are constantly flooded with comments praising their body type. Some of the most frequent comments consist of "I was going to eat today and now I'm not" or "I wish I was this skinny". These comments receive thousands of likes and are visible to millions. One of the followed users on TikTok is Addison Rae , a 19-year-old woman who has accumulated over 55 million followers by making videos performing "TikTok dances" or partaking in other trends.

Since her rise to Internet fame, Rae has been involved in numerous controversies. On Easter, her mom, Sheri Nicole , uploaded a video of her family eating Peeps , in which Rae chews and spits out the marshmallow. Though this may seem nontoxic, spitting out food is common in restrictive eating disorders. In the comments, Rae wrote, "me not wanting the unnecessary calories". Her comment, despite grossly normalizing restricting your calorie intake, received 81.7k likes.

In May, a video of Rae dancing to the song "Prom Queen" by Beach Bunny while promoting the AExME Prom received strong criticism from other users on the app. Beach Bunny's lyrics, sung not in the TikTok audio but later in the song, explicitly describe restricting food and becoming extremely thin. In response to her song going viral on TikTok, she commented on her music video , "You are worthy of love, you are beautiful just the way you are - please don't harm your health or well being to live up to these invented expectations, it is not worth risking your life over." Survivors of eating disorders have since made videos to the audio sharing their experiences with their condition and what the song means to them.

Unfortunately, this kind of content is not new to TikTok nor is it limited to videos centered around this particular audio. Videos depicting different eating disorder behaviors and/or methods used to lose weight with captions like, "Let's confuse people with normal relationships with food," have also trended on the app. Showcasing habits used to unhealthily lose weight are not only harmful to the general public, but can leave people with eating disorders wondering why they haven't tried a specific method. Furthermore, sharing obscure methods gives the impression that having an eating disorder makes you a part of an exclusive club, when in reality, eating disorders are incredibly competitive.

Content surrounding eating disorders and an unhealthy portrayal of body image and weight loss on TikTok is eerily similar to pro-ana and pro-mia communities that populated in the early 2010s. "Pro-ana" refers to promoting dangerous behaviors related to anorexia nervosa, and likewise with bulimia for "pro-mia". These communities provide "thinspo" (content that inspires a person to lose more weight) and glorify disordered eating and a competitive attitude around thinness.

While Tumblr users had to search for blogs or hashtags to follow, the TikTok algorithm caters content directly to your "For You" page. Rather than scrolling through the "Following" tab, most TikTok users watch most of the content on the "For You" page. The algorithm shows you content based on what you interact with most, so once you engage with an eating disorder video, it becomes increasingly difficult to steer away from them.

The frequent appearance of glamorized eating disorder content on TikTok promotes unhealthy behaviors by strengthening the idea of a "perfect", yet often unattainable, body type. All bodies are different, and certain body types are not realistic for all.

Eating disorders are experienced by people of all genders, races, sizes, etc. Men account for about one in three people struggling with an eating disorder, yet are scarcely given their deserved space in discussions on these conditions. With eating disorders often being characterized as "feminine", stigma surrounding men with disordered eating can be a heavy obstacle standing in the way of help.

Additionally, despite anorexia nervosa and bulimia being the only eating disorders commonly recognized amongst the general public, they are not the only ones that exist. Other underrepresented eating disorders fall beneath a group known as "Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorders" (OSFED). OSFED embodies disorders that cause significant clinical distress without meeting full criteria for any other eating disorder, including, but not limited to, atypical anorexia nervosa (AN), in which the individual's weight is still within a perceived healthy range, and unspecified binge eating disorders.

Particularly with atypical AN, individuals who were considered overweight before losing a significant amount of weight are overlooked and even sometimes praised for their behaviors. The extent of their condition is often invalidated due to the stereotypes that accompany the preconceived and noninclusive "image" of a person with an eating disorder.

While a person may be deeply struggling from an eating disorder, it might not be revealed just by looking at them. Even seemingly harmless videos, such as someone sharing their weight loss journey through simple images, can perpetuate eating disorders by encouraging unrealistic body standards without regard for the varying appearances eating disorders can take in each unique individual. Users commenting "I'm so jealous" or "Drop the tutorial" on a weight-loss transformation video can unknowingly be celebrating the effects of an eating disorder. Remarks applauding extreme weight loss are especially harmful as they reinforce false beauty standards that make young women feel as though being skinny is the only way to be beautiful. However, the truth is: You do not need to be any particular shape or size to be beautiful, to be loved, or to love yourself and your body. Your journey with self-love does not need to be a weight loss journey. Your body is already worth celebrating.

Eating disorders are serious mental health conditions, with anorexia having a mortality rate of 10% , the second highest of all psychiatric disorders. One in five deaths from anorexia will be by suicide. It's important to recognize the behavioral signs, such as attitudes that emphasize weight loss and control of food, discomfort with eating in public, mood swings, and withdrawal from friends and usual activities, rather than just physical changes in an individual. If you do detect warning signs, remember to leave stigma and stereotypes behind and to engage in a sincere convo with your friend or loved one.

To brighten your TikTok feed with more self-love, check out these body-positive creators on the app. Tarah Elizabeth (@tarahelizabeth_), Kellie Brown (@andigetdressed), Clara Guillem (@claraandherself), Sam Dylan Finch (@samdylanfinch), Denise Mercedes (@denisemmercedes), and Brittani Lancaster (@brittanilancaster) are just a few of the inspiring individuals spreading positivity and pushing back against the harmful effects of eating disorder content on social media.
If you are struggling, please contact the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) Helpline at (800) 931-2237 or The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. You can also refer to NEDA's website to find support and learn more about eating disorders and body-positivity.

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Does TikTok Contribute to the Normalization of Eating Disorders? Let's Unpack.

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Content Warning - Eating Disorders: This article discusses language around eating disorders and weight loss in online spaces like the app TikTok.* TikTok, a social media platform that gained popularity in 2019 and picked up traction with college-aged students at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, on the surface is a seemingly innocent app that [...]

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This one is super important because it shows the normalization of not just EDO but diet and skinny culture. Rather than sugar coating it it shows the real things that have been happening because of this culture. It shows the consequences that happen because of this normaliztion!

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"I wasn't going to eat anyways."
This phrase is frequently seen as the top comment on TikTok videos featuring thin creators, implying that if someone is skinnier than them, they shouldn't eat.

Recently, TikTok has become a watering pond for weight loss content, using trends - a phenomenon that the app is famous for - to normalize symptoms of eating disorders such as the obsession over one's weight and calorie intake.

The platform uses an algorithm that shows users videos based on their interests (which they determine by which videos users like or which accounts users follow) on their For You Page (FYP), making the app enjoyable. This also limits the user's control, as the FYP is the first thing that pops up when they open the app, allowing potentially triggering videos to appear without warning.

The first TikTok trend related to weight loss appeared in the beginning of shelter-in-place orders in March of 2020, as an influx of users began posting videos asking for weight loss tips, trying to achieve a "summer glow up." This started off with good intentions. Since quarantine shut down gyms and confined people to their own homes, users began to promote helpful home workout routines and videos. Other TikTok users shared tips for leading healthier lifestyles, such as creating hearty smoothie recipes and offering alternatives like using whole wheat instead of white flour.

As time passed, this trend evolved. Still retaining the same name and goal of weight loss tips, users started asking for ways to lose weight "no matter how unhealthy." Even worse, people were still providing suggestions, fueling the trend even further.

A popular suggestion was water fasting - a diet that promotes drinking water as a substitute for eating for a certain amount of days - depleting individuals of necessary nutrients. According to Health Line, water fasting is known to have a high association with bulimia nervosa, since the immediate aftereffects usually include overeating and periods of low energy, both of which are prominent symptoms of the eating disorder. Although this trend is clearly dangerous, the app's herd mentality - the tendency for people's behavior or beliefs to conform to others - caused users as a whole to ignore the toxicity and continue promoting it. This circulated the obsession of eating and weight loss, normalizing this unhealthy behavior.

One trend that stands out involves users posting the title, "Let's confuse people who have a healthy relationship with food," followed by a collage of photos that displays images ranging from calorie counters - apps that track the amount of calories eaten per meal - to weight scales and rice crackers with approximately 35 calories. The comment section was filled with remarks from others who recognized these photos and users even bonded and shared more tips. What's worse is that no one realized how dangerous these posts are; they provided a false sense of safety, raising the deluded question, "If so many people are doing it, can it really be that bad?"

The true results of eating disorders, specifically anorexia, belie the romanticized version on TikTok that minimizes expressing their danger. The National Eating Disorder Association states that eating disorders are a mental illness and a serious issue - they take a harsh toll on one's body, and continuous indulgence in these habits will slowly cause one's physical and mental health to deteriorate to alarming states, resulting in consequences including organ failure.

The normalization of eating disorders did not start at TikTok - rather, they began on previous social media sites that had "hype" such as and Musical.ly, where the hashtags "pro-ana" and "pro-mia," which stand for pro-anorexia and pro-bulimia, respectively, were used to circulate numerous triggering videos. TikTok and its predecessors have taken precautions before, banning the hashtags and any labelled videos and providing users searching for this content with the National Eating Disorder Hotline. But users nevertheless found loopholes and were able to continue posting under misspelled hashtags, allowing similar dangerous content to remain unflagged.

Seeing others participate in the same unhealthy weight loss trends or go through the same struggles serves as encouragement and gives individuals a deluded sense of motivation to continue. Social media helps spread this mindset since it fosters the circulation of posts containing these trends, and also provides a community of unhealthy users who follow them, telling each other how effective the tips are in the comments.

This problem extends far beyond the realm of social media platforms. Eating disorders have been a major issue for a long time- society's toxic beauty standards teach us to aspire to be skinnier from a young age.

The media has long glorified photos of underweight models, projecting their body shape as the ideal beauty standard. Seeing these images everywhere - from mainstream TV to being plastered on store windows - inevitably causes susceptible minds, especially young girls, to begin comparing themselves with the models. This leads to an unhealthy fixation on weight and body image, manifesting into potentially unhealthy eating patterns.

The media has long glorified photos of underweight models, projecting their body shape as the ideal beauty standard. Seeing these images everywhere - from mainstream TV to being plastered on store windows - inevitably causes susceptible minds, especially young girls, to begin comparing themselves with the models."

TikTok has a "not interested" button and a feature to block users and sounds from showing up on the FYP. Merely not interacting with a harmful post can deter another one from showing up, and simply reporting it can prevent it from showing up on other users' FYPs.

But we need to begin addressing this issue not only on TikTok but together as a community. Our biggest problem is society glamorizing its definition of an "ideal body." We have to stop promoting this beauty standard and instead, begin encouraging the importance of maintaining a healthy body, one that will look different for everyone. This includes shifting our goals towards healthier lifestyles rather than weight loss - blogs such as Plant-Based on a Budget and A Couple Cooks or workout channel POPSUGAR Fitness help encourage this behavior.

Changing our mindset helps directly attack the roots of eating disorders but we also need to actively fight against them; commencing education towards this mental illness is necessary, as the caveat will begin to dissolve the romanticization that currently surrounds it. Actively speaking up and promoting resources that can help others such as the National Eating Disorder Hotline and specific organizations and websites that direct their focus on eating disorders can spread more awareness and be extremely helpful to our community. Acknowledging this problem is the first step; once achieved, we can slowly take it down piece by piece.

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Let's stop normalizing and minimizing the impact of eating disorders

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"I wasn't going to eat anyways." This phrase is frequently seen as the top comment on TikTok videos featuring thin creators, implying that if someone is skinnier than them, they shouldn't eat.

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In this video it not only talks about what an eating disorder is but what the stigma behind it is. It talks about what causes an eating disorder and how it happens. It then talks about the stigma and culture surrounded around it. It overall is a great ted talk that dives in EDOS and why they are so common.

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Removing the Stigma of Talking About Eating Disorders | Gabrielle Bernstein | TEDxSaintAndrewsSchool