Recently, I succumbed and re-downloaded TikTok, allocating myself just 10 minutes of harmless doom scrolling – with the intention of deleting the app again afterwards. That was… until I stumbled across Liv Schmidt. The 22-year-old influencer appeared on screen, meeting every cookie cutter beauty standard. Long blonde hair, chic outfits and, crucially, a slender frame. For a moment, as she detailed how she only consumed a spoonful of each small plate on her date night, it felt like she was speaking directly to me, letting me in on some kind of precious secret.
Unravelling a mysterious code: how to look just like her, tiny waist and all. I was both enchanted and nauseated. Schmidt, the beauty-ideal-box-checking creator, who at one point had 670,000 TikTok followers (along with 4,000 more on YouTube and 72,000 on Instagram), openly touts ‘skinny’ both as her aesthetic and USP. Schmidt’s original TikTok account was closed down by the platform a few weeks ago for violating their community guidelines. Yet she’s already back with a new one boasting 70,000 fans.
The influencer’s content has sparked not insignificant backlash, for its focus is on portion control videos and what it means to have a “skinny lifestyle”. One popular post, titled ‘What I Eat in a Day to Stay Skinny’, marries aesthetically pleasing photos of protein shakes and bags of trail mix (nuts and seeds) — which Schmidt clarifies she only ate half of. This level of candidness about offering up ‘thinspiration’ online is not a new phenomenon, but until recently it was deeply unfashionable (remember body positivity?). What’s more: the seemingly innocuous packaging makes it curiously addictive.
Spend just a few moments on social media today and it’s clear messaging like Schmidt’s is spreading far and wide. Within just a few moments of watching her video on loop, I am greeted with another. And another. An algorithm-induced deluge — of ‘skinny girl’ workouts, quarter bites of pizza and tips on what shades of blue can, apparently, make you ‘look like a whale’ — soon dominates my screen, and it’s hard to look away. While Schmidt isn’t alone in creating this type of content, she’s quickly becoming the name associated with pushing thinness.
Who is Liv Schmidt?
“I eat to fuel my body, not my emotions,” Schmidt tells me, when I first call her to discuss her rise to internet notoriety. “That’s a skinny girl mindset.”
When she’s not posting content, Schmidt works a glamorous-looking corporate job in New York — another element of her appeal and aspirational factor. She’s far more approachable than I expected, chatty and personable as ever. Ditching the tone of her usual monotone cadence, Schmidt’s words flow freely without any hesitation – she speaks to me like a friend. Despite this, the creator hasn’t been able to avoid backlash. Titling her videos with the likes of ‘15 min slimming thigh workout for snatched thighs overnight’, cautioning against creamy soups and at times, even using pig emojis alongside her diet tips.
Everyone's clicking on...
Some viewers have been left furious by Schmidt’s posts, accusing her of promoting toxic eating and exercise habits. But the fury is no match for the clear appeal of her content, which amassed millions of views before her account was shut down. Clearly, there’s a market for thinspiration – and it’s thriving. Schmidt doesn’t want to talk about her account being closed, but her view on any backlash? “People are body positive until you’re skinnier than them, or you’re leaner than them. A lot of people who judge me have been through eating disorders,” Schmidt claims. “Since I’ve never had one, I can’t relate.”
She’s unapologetic and holds steadfast to her approach. “I’ve posted [about] health and fitness for, like, three years, but I didn’t get solely to the purpose of health and food until recently,” she adds. “That was due to everyone commenting about my body and appearance like ‘what do you do [to look this way]?’ and my answers to those questions are the videos that do well.”
According to Schmidt, the mass controversy surrounding her page — which she started in 2020 — didn’t begin until she lost weight herself. Schmidt also admits that when she used to put certain keywords in her videos to target those interested in weight loss, she would receive the most hate.
“My brand is how to stay skinny, how to stay lean, how to stay slim — whatever you want to call it,” Schmidt tells Cosmopolitan UK. “I feel like in the corporate workforce, there’s so much talk about weight, steps and this and that.” To Schmidt, being skinny is a mindset, a buzzword.
Anyone can be skinny, she says. “It could just be a feeling, like, you want to fit in your skinny jeans again. Or you want to lose that ‘15 pounds (6kg)’ because there’s always food around your office, or you're going [out] to eat with your co-workers and you aren’t moving.”
It’s clear from the comments on Schmidt’s videos that many endorse her approach, with users comments referring to her as ‘real’ and an ‘icon’. She says that her ‘What I Eat In a Day’ videos are just giving her audience what they want — referring to her content as “marketing 101.”
Schmidt was inspired to launch her “skinny group community” after receiving inquiries from women, asking if she could make them a meal plan or share her workouts. The group, which Schmidt claims has almost 400 subscribers, largely made up of 18-60-year-old women, costs $9 (£6.87) a month to join, and members exchange meal ideas, receive daily workout reminders and compare the number of steps they’ve tracked per day. The influencer says she makes roughly $3,564 (£2,664) a month from the group alone – more than the average British person’s monthly salary – though she maintains she only started charging in an effort to keep the haters out.
After we speak, Schmidt puts me in contact with a skinny group member named Marie Gaeta, a 26-year-old woman from New Jersey. Gaeta subscribed to the community last June when she was actively trying to lose weight. Now, she says, she’s far more focused on her health and wellness rather than the numbers on the scale. “I found Liv on TikTok,” Gaeta explains, in the same manner you might describe finding a new therapist. “I liked her content and saw she had group chat where she pretty much said it was girls supporting girls.” Despite the name of the group, Gaeta says the word skinny is rarely brought up by any of the members. Instead, they send photos and words of encouragement to one another. “All of the advice I've received is priceless,” she says sincerely. “I don’t know where I would be right now without all of the tips I’ve received.”
At times, however, Gaeta says members of the group do discuss how to navigate “food pushers” – a word coined to describe people in their lives who are encouraging them to eat food that they don’t want to consume. When I ask Gaeta for an inside look into the Instagram subscription group chat, she politely declines. One of the group rules is no screenshots – to ensure complete privacy for subscribers. And according to Gaeta, the only restriction for the chat that she knows of is an 18+ age rule and an application that’s reviewed by Schmidt personally.
So, what restrictions do the most popular social apps have then? Instagram told Cosmopolitan UK that on top of their extensive policies regarding eating disorder content, they never allow posts that encourage or glamorise toxic eating habits either. According to Jodie Palmer, the communications manager at Meta, these policies are consistent throughout all subscription content – including subscriber chats. TikTok also told Cosmopolitan UK they do not allow content that promotes dangerous eating habits, and remove any video that violates this policy – citing 96% of all of them being taken down by the app from January 2024 to March 2024.
What are people buying into?
While eating disorders can affect anyone of any age, race or gender – young women are known to be disproportionately impacted, and according to Dr. Helen McCarthy, an expert in psychology and appetite, social media algorithms showcasing videos like Schmidt’s can play a large and dangerous role in aggravating an eating disorder. This is especially true within young people, she says (Statista reports that 75.6% of all TikTok users are between the ages of 15 and 24).
“Before you know it, if you're not as thin and skinny as [these creators] and your whole page is coming up like that – within no time at all you’re going to be thinking ‘Oh actually, I could lose some weight’,” McCarthy explains.
As for the skinny group community, the appetite expert labels it a cause for concern. Even if 100 people eat the exact same as Schmidt, she says, they won’t end up the same size – and nor should they. Bodies and genetics aren’t supposed to be homogenous, and there’s beauty in our diversity. “There’s a bit of a faulty logic, what people are buying into,” said McCarthy, referring to the Instagram group chat. For many, Schmidt’s content serves as something much deeper than an influencer marketing ploy. But, in a world where social media runs on algorithms, whose responsibility really is it to keep our feeds free of diet-focussed rhetoric?
It’s clear the algorithms across all platforms play a part and it’s encouraging that TikTok and Instagram have certainly placed tighter regulations on what users are actively searching. For instance, upon typing in “thinspo” on either platform, I’m solely presented with resources for eating disorders. And according to TikTok, they intervene on certain content patterns to help ensure videos related to unhealthy habits are not viewed too often. But even after all of this, my own ‘for you page’ is still crawling with ‘skinny aesthetic’ content — videos of hyper slim legs, calculations of calories and body-checking all dominate. Given that a 2021 survey from Beat, of 182 people with experience of an eating disorder, found 64% said they were personally targeted by social media adverts harmful to their eating disorder, it’s cause for concern.
According to Dr. Helen McCarthy, triggers in the world of disordered eating are more complex than they seem. “The problem is, for people who are vulnerable to the development of an eating disorder, [skinny-focussed content] means something different than it does to people who may be less susceptible,” she says.
When I put this to Schmidt, she says when it comes to younger viewers on the app, it’s down to their parents, and presumably the platforms themselves, to control the type of content they absorb – rather than for her change what she posts. “It's literally just me sharing my life,” she says. “It’s normalising that it’s okay if you want to look a certain aesthetic, and lean.” Schmidt also says she’s upfront about not being a qualified dietician, stresses that she’s never had an eating disorder, and says that her tips won’t work for everyone – but information from her remains in high demand.
In one of her latest videos, Schmidt addresses her new audience and encourages them to ‘gatekeep’ her content this time around to avoid a second removal. “We don’t want any of the fat positive people to be on here,” she tells them. In a culture where thinspo constantly recycles and renews, on Schmidt’s page and elsewhere – the line between what’s an individual choice and refreshing honesty versus what’s harmful begins to blur.
Amalie Lee is an eating disorder recovery coach and founder of Let’s Recover UK, which she started during her recovery from anorexia nervosa 10 years ago. In her experience, she stresses that even if an influencer like Schmidt claims her intentions are well-meaning – their effects aren’t without damage. “Realistically, if you’re quite young or isolated and you see that – it’s naive to say, ‘they should just log out’. In reality, [we need to think] are vulnerable people going to see that – and is that worth it?”
In the face of an increasing return to size zero aesthetics, both on the runway and via the rise in weight loss injections, the battle against unhealthy eating habits rages on. Whether it will be a flash in the pan trend or our new normal remains to be seen – but given the large appetite Schmidt’s fans have for her content, we can assume that, at least for now, it’s not looking likely to go anywhere.
