On a Saturday in late January, TikToker Bradyn Shenberger made a video about his love for Target’s plus-size mannequin. In it, he looks longingly at the mannequin. He captioned the TikTok to say that anyone who is “built like the plus size target mannequin… please put it on me.”
Shenberger said shortly after posting the video, people “swamped” the comments section by tagging Yiddiez. The plus-size, Black, 24-year-old TikToker has almost half a million followers and a video series “Fat or Cap” that calls out people who are suspected of lying about being interested in bigger-bodied women.
To confirm whether they’re telling the truth, Yiddiez analyzes their social media presence and following.
“Fear sets in when any popular creator is going to do some sort of analysis on you,” Shenberger told the Daily Dot in a phone interview.
Sure enough, three days after Shenberger posted his TikTok, Yiddiez featured him in an episode of “Fat or Cap.” Based on the number of plus-size women that Shenberger follows, Yiddiez deemed his affinity for bigger-bodied women to be authentic.
“Fat or Cap” is structured like a talk show host’s monologue, and Yiddiez has the charisma and stage presence of a comedian that could hold an audience captive watch night after night. At the start of most of TikToks in the series, the New Jersey-based TikToker walks into frame while sipping on a Capri Sun.
“Hello. Are you there? Are you watching? It is me, your host, Yiddiez,” she says into the handle of a broom like it’s a microphone. “And you are watching the next episode of ‘Fat or Cap.’”
On a green screen behind her, a screen recording shows Yiddiez going through the accounts that her latest subject—a user of any race and gender, though most often a cisgender man—follows to see if they include a satisfactory percentage of plus-size women.
After analyzing their social media platforms and listening to her gut feelings about the person’s intentions, Yiddiez makes her judgment: Either “fat,” meaning that the person is actually interested in plus-size women, or “cap,” meaning that their comments about being into big girls are all for show and/or are fetishizing.
Yiddiez’s assessments aren’t based on an exact science, but she uses TikTok to talk about how some people say they’re sexually interested in plus-size women for personal gain. Yiddiez holds people accountable for the remarks they made about plus-size people, affirming that those who are truly body-positive show it in words and actions—and that bigger-bodied people deserve authentic appreciation.
In a phone interview with the Daily Dot, Yiddiez said that she based “Fat or Cap” off of another popular TikTok series called “Fact or Cap,” wherein musical duo Party Shirt bust and debunk myths. After seeing how well those videos were doing, she thought she’d do her own spin on them.
“One day I was like, ‘What if I do something on guys that say that they like plus-size women?’ Because there was a time on TikTok where every other video was a guy saying how much they love plus-size women,” she told the Daily Dot. (Yiddiez prefers to go by her screen name to protect her privacy.)
Her videos took off: After only a year on TikTok, Yiddiez is on her fourth season of “Fat or Cap.” Seasons include 25 episodes, and Yiddiez has made 85 “Fat or Cap” videos so far. She also makes season recaps to remind followers of who received a “fat” score and whether or not they’re single. The majority of the videos from the series go viral, and some have almost 350,000 views.
Yiddiez grew up plus-size, and her struggles—including not getting attention from men that she hoped for—made her distrust people who say they’re into bigger-bodied women. She wants them to really mean it.
“Sometimes in the cases when guys do like plus size women, it’s only like in the privacy of their own home,” Yiddiez said, explaining that she has dated men who don’t introduce her to their friends or families. “In most of my experiences, guys [tended] to never show me out in public.”
“Fat or Cap” calls out those who only say they like bigger-bodied women for clout and celebrates people who appreciate plus-sized women publicly and unabashedly.
Shenberger said he felt very celebrated after Yiddiez posted her “Fat or Cap” episode about him: He called getting her approval “a fucking honor.” He now has almost 3,000 followers, and his video about the Target mannequin has been viewed over a million times. The comments section of the video is also full of plus-size women shooting their shot—TikToker @janie.brothers commented on Shenberger’s video telling him that she’s available on Valentine’s Day. User @bossangg said she’d be his “target woman.”
Jaimie Weisberg is another content creator who makes videos on TikTok and Instagram calling out people who seem to lie about being interested in plus-size women.
“The way society views bigger people, it’s really hard for a plus-size woman to be genuinely on a dating app or date or, or in general, just to exist,” Weisberg told the Daily Dot in a phone interview.
She said when she saw “Fat or Cap,” she felt like someone was “finally” weeding out the posers from those who genuinely celebrate plus-size women.
“Finally, like, we’re no longer taking this shit anymore,” Weisberg told the Daily Dot.
In a “Fat or Cap” video that ended in Yiddiez deeming a male TikToker “cap” about his purported love for women who weigh over 250 pounds, she called the man’s list of accounts he follows “lies.”
“I’m here to give you the truth,” Yiddiez says to the camera. “And the truth is? He don’t like us. He just want us for clout. So, ladies don’t fall for it. Don’t slide into his DMs. And you know what? It’s a cap.”
The Daily Dot was not able to reach any of the creators who Yiddiez said were “cap” about liking plus-size women.
To further engage those who are featured on “Fat or Cap” videos, Yiddiez sometimes asks those who receive a “cap” rating what it is that they like about plus-size women.
“I don’t want a response that’s generic, like, ‘Oh, like bigger bodies are better to hold and cuddle, or they cook better,’” she told the Daily Dot. “I didn’t really get any responses from those. So that just shows you what their answer is.”
Alexis Germany, a dating and relationships coach and content creator, said that the genius of Yiddiez’s videos is her ability to make people laugh with her quips and tone while talking about a phenomenon that many thin people don’t know about.
“It is a serious topic that people should be aware of,” Germany said, noting she has plus-size female clients who have been with men who will only see them “behind closed doors.” “The ‘cap’ people should really think twice about what they’re doing. Because they are really hurting people and the movement of body positivity.”
The body positivity movement, which is related to the fat rights movement that began in the late 1960s, has become a common hashtag in the past couple of years (#bodypositivity has over 20 billion views on TikTok). The movement is anchored in celebrating and accepting all types of bodies—not just those who ascribe to a Eurocentric, thin, conventional standard of beauty—and some practice body positivity (or a related concept, body neutrality) by focusing on coming to terms with their own bodies as they are.
Germany’s comment is particularly poignant because the body positivity movement is a rejection of typical standards of beauty. People lying, hyperbolizing, and jumping on the bandwagon to falsely proclaim sexual desire for bigger bodies undermines the movement entirely.
Beyond Yiddiez’s investigative work for the plus-size community, Weisberg said that Yiddiez’s TikTok presence is paramount because viewers are able to see a plus-size woman winning: Yiddiez posts about her daily life, dating, clothes, workouts, and more. To Weisberg, Yiddiez shows that the least interesting thing about a plus-size woman is her body.
Yiddiez says her online presence doesn’t “bleed” into her “regular life,” and that she doesn’t let all of the positive reception around her videos get to her head—though she can’t deny that getting comments from supermodel Tess Holliday on her videos was pretty cool.
“When people that I look up to like the work that I’m putting out?” Yiddiez said, “That’s what I really do enjoy.”
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