The Body Positivity Side of TikTok

Tiktok was established on September 1st of 2016; however, at that time it went by the name of Musical.ly. Then, in 2017, it was renamed TikTok and the app blew up again. Youtube influencers began to use it as a major platform, and regular people were beginning to become famous for videos that went viral on the app. Transition to three years later and TikTok is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms in the world. It now has 2 billion downloads on the App Store and Google Play, and 41% of users are between the ages of 16-24. Now, while this app has the capability to build communities and help people, it can also influence people, specifically young adults in a negative way.

Recently, there has been a trend going around where people share their “what I eat in a day.” In these videos, they show themselves only eating very healthy foods, counting their calories (to a total of which is very low), and mostly eating extremely small portions throughout the day. This has become very influential and has captured the attention of many young girls (and boys) who believe they have inferior body types to those making these kinds of videos and must pick up a similar restricted food intake.

In light of this, there has been an emergence of TikTok creators who have embraced the notion of body positivity in order to combat the negative and unhealthy behaviors that previous creators advertise. Some of them started to create their own “what I eat in a day” videos with realistic and normal portions of food, while also encouraging their followers to eat what feels right for their bodies. Others embraced the idea of intuitive eating (the idea of eating in order to fuel and satisfy your body), teaching their followers how they can participate in that. Some simply wore clothes that didn’t hide their body fat in order to normalize all different body shapes and sizes in all different styles of clothing. Many people have found themselves being on this “side” of TikTok lately, and these creators have grown enormously in their popularity. The fact that there are people out there, influencing their demographic of young girls to be proud of their bodies and how amazing they are, will eventually help the next generation to do the same.

Some major influencers that have embraced body positivity in their TikTok account are @Brittanilancaster @victoriagarrick4 @lizzo @xobrooklynne and @denisemmercedes. Also, check out our article “Body Positivity Influencers” for more inspiring women to fill your feed with!