Problematic on TikTok is a weekly column that unpacks the troubling trends that are emerging on the popular platform and runs on Tuesdays in the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter. If you want to get this column a day before we publish it, subscribe to web_crawlr, where you’ll get the daily scoop of internet culture delivered straight to your inbox.
Analysis
Fatphobia and weight loss content are rampant on TikTok—I should know, I’ve written multiple columns about both topics.
But there is a particular type of body-focused content that surges on TikTok in the months leading up to summer: Videos about how one’s body has changed over the last year, as measured by how well they fit into last year’s warm-weather clothes.
Like clockwork, this year’s batch of videos about not fitting into your old jean shorts have surfaced over the past few days. Set to a clip of Gennifer Goodwin saying “I need to buy a gun” in CBS’s Why Women Kill, women are implying that they need to shoot themselves (or someone else) because they don’t fit into a bathing suit the way they used to.
And not just fitting into bathing suits and jean shorts: Women on TikTok are saying they “need to buy a gun” because they “don’t look like Sydney Sweeney yet,” weigh as little as they did in high school, or didn’t “get skinny for the 6th summer in a row.”
A lot of these body-shaming videos also tie in food-shaming. TikToks about regretting “sweet treats” eaten over the past “six months” and “eating garbage” all semester have gone viral, too.
One comedian posted a video that encapsulates my feelings about this harmful trend over the weekend, saying that she needs to buy a gun after “seeing everyone use this audio to shame themselves for not fitting into last summer’s clothes.”
Why it matters
Disordered thoughts about food and our bodies spike around summertime because warm weather means lighter, less full-coverage clothes for many. The harm in making videos about how dissatisfied you are with your body because of how it’s changed in the last year is it could encourage others to feel the same way about their bodies.
And bodies change, constantly and inevitably. TikToker and and founder of the #NormalizeNormalBodies movement Mik Zazon regularly posts videos about the importance of getting clothes that fit you, even if that means getting new clothes regularly.
A few years back, she posted a video that has always stuck with me about her seasonal habit of going through her clothes to see if they still work for her body. If they don’t, she simply gets new clothes that fit her.
Easier said than done, but giving your body grace and accepting that it will change can be that simple.