Disordered eating has been trending on social media since the early 2010s, but now it wears a new deceptive mask
cw: eating disorders
Approximately one million Canadians have been diagnosed with an eating disorder. Teens and young adults are the most at risk groups. Women are particularly vulnerable as they make up approximately 80 per cent of patients. The risk of developing an eating disorder is further heightened by social media trends that glorify unhealthy eating.
The ‘girl dinner’ trend went viral on TikTok this past summer and remains popular on the for you page. ‘Girl dinner’ started as a joke where young women and girls were showing weird combinations of food they put together as meals. However, the trend quickly slipped into the dangerous territory of disordered eating. People now use it to show off their tiny portions of food. Dinner implies a full meal, but many ‘girl dinners’ are barely a snack.
When ‘girl dinner’ first started promoting unsafe behaviours, I was reminded of the eating disorder culture that ran rampant on Tumblr in the early 2010s. Both ‘girl dinner’ and the pro-anorexia rhetoric from Tumblr encourage people to obsess over lowering calorie intake to obtain the ‘ideal body.’
Although awareness has increased, the culture has not changed. If anything, it is more pervasive and even deceptive. In the 2010s it was easy to discern what posts promoted eating disorders and unattainable bodies. For example, the quote “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’ was popularized in 2009 by Kate Moss.
Today, it is much trickier to identify certain trends as problematic. ‘Girl dinner’ falls into this category of deception for two reasons.
First, it started as a joke. These meals were not intended to be taken seriously. However, calling a cheese string, five strawberries, and two hardboiled eggs a dinner sends out a harmful message. Some even started calling crying, vaping, and sleeping a ‘girl dinner.’ There are even ‘girl dinner’ filters on TikTok. Several of the options include things like medication, cocktails, and condiments. These are not meals.
Second, ‘girl dinner’ is linked to a broader trend of using the word ‘girl’ as an adjective in phrases like girl dinner, hot girl summer, and girl math. Typically, ‘girl’ has been used to devalue womens’ abilities. Now, the term is being used to reclaim feminine energy and activities. However, in doing so the dangerous implications of ‘girl dinner’ have been harder to discern.
‘Girl dinner’ wears a deceptive mask so it is critical to take a step back and analyze the issues with this trend and others like it.
Several eating disorders, including anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder have been listed with symptomatic criteria in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental illness. Collectively, eating disorders are among the deadliest mental illnesses. Disordered eating should never be promoted.
Tumblr was a breeding ground for eating disorders, hating one’s body, and abusing food intake to change one’s appearance. Social media is likely the reason why every single woman in my life has suffered from an eating disorder or has shown signs of disordered eating. Every single woman.
I was young teen when eating disorder culture spread like wildfire on Tumblr. Being bombarded with unhealthy images, quotes, and blogs contributed to my personal struggles with food. It is my hope that McMaster students and Generation Z alike can be the ones to end this cycle of toxicity, and this starts with calling out ‘girl dinner’ for what it is - a trend glorifying mental illness.
If you are struggling with an eating disorder McMaster University’s Student Wellness Centre offers resources to help you find trusted support for you or a friend in need. The National Eating Disorder Information Centre offers a helpline, information, and referrals. The NEDIC also offers resources specifically for racialized community members.
If you need urgent care, St. Joseph’s Healthcare in Hamilton has an Eating Disorder Program to help treat and guide anyone 16 or older. The program does require a referral from your doctor, but St Joseph’s has a self-assessment to guide you towards the treatment necessary for you. Please remember that you are never alone.
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By: Christine Chow
Coined as a portmanteau from the words “study” and “Tumblr,” a “studyblr” is exactly what it sounds like: a Tumblr blog used for the purposes of studying. While many types of Tumblr blogs exist, ranging from hipster to fandom to social justice blogs the way stereotypical cliques mark their territory in a high school cafeteria, the studyblr is a strange attempt at reconciling the polar opposites of academics and procrastination (by means of social media).
As opposed to the average gifset, studyblrs tend to post or reblog aesthetic pictures of personal workspaces. These are often filtered shots of desks topped with nice plants, glossy computer screens, post-its, and neatly arranged sets of notebooks. Other reblogs show close-ups of notes in a combination of different colours and fonts, surrounded by an array of classy pens.
The obvious judgment is to dismiss these blogs as pointless. Reblogging or liking pictures of other people’s study set-ups in no way helps you get your own studying done, and if you’re too busy ooh-ing and aw-ing over the aesthetics of someone else’s workspace, trying to capture the perfect angle of your own, or beautifying your notes, then you’re wasting valuable time you could otherwise be using to mentally process what you missed out on during that lecture you fell asleep in.
However, if you’re like the majority of the student population, you’ve probably already come to terms with your inherent inability to stomach the multitude of information that gets vomited up by the course syllabus. You sit for hours on end in the same spot, staring at the same generic word document of notes you’ve managed to compile over the span of the term and flipping through the same tasteless PowerPoint slides your professor has probably recycled from last year. By comparison, venturing into the depths of Mordor seems like a much more appealing task.
A closer look at the Studyblr community reveals a group of like-minded individuals who are willing to empathize with the chronic symptoms of studying. In addition to sharing pictures, bloggers also share solid note-taking tips. For instance, how to start a bullet journal: a current popular technique for organizing all your tasks and to-do lists by code. Further investigation reveals self-care tips for mediating study stress, as well as favourite stationary types and methods of condensing information that have helped individual bloggers succeed.
Tumblr’s rise to fame in the past couple of years is accorded not just to its standing as a social media platform, but to its creativity and adaptability for multiple demographics – a metaphorical Room of Requirement. Though the effectiveness of its “study group” aesthetic is definitely questionable, its unique attempt to incorporate what all students dread into a leisure activity ought to be admired. Everyone studies differently, so there’s no harm in trying out different studying methods until you find out what works best for you.
Check out these studyblrs:
Photo Credit: Pretty Studying
By: Mitali Chaudhary
Humans have always marveled at the curves and fine lines of their own faces—thousands of years of portraiture and art can attest to this. But now that we can immortalize our pouts with the simple tap of a button, our inner narcissists have never been more prevalent. This rising trend of taking ridiculous amounts of “selfies,” and meticulously inspecting them for flaws, not only reveals our infatuation with the “perfect body” and ourselves but also displays blatant selfishness and an inflated self-worth, especially when taken in inappropriate places.
Unfortunately, technology only propagates this culture. Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, and other social media platforms provide the perfect environment to post selfies, where the poster can get instant validation and encouragement to publish more of the same. Another example is Snapchat, in which the whole point is to send innumerable selfies (with one line of text). In fact, recent scientific studies show that some degree of narcissism correlates directly with the number of followers, likes, status updates and, of course, selfies an individual has. Because in this digital age it is wholly accepted to do so, we can easily engage in shameless self-promotion without consequence.
This culture shows its truly ugly side when people are driven to take selfies in extremely inappropriate situations. A few unforgettable examples include “selfie at Auschwitz,” or the one where a woman took a selfie while a man was in the background being talked down from the side of a bridge by the police. There are also the countless selfies taken at funerals. Such behaviour demonstrates callousness and a shift in moral values caused by an increased focus on oneself and, although these cases are few, show a possible path our society can take due to extreme selfie culture.
It’s a given that seeking the approval of others and taking the occasional selfie is healthy and fun, to an extent. Our obsession with being admired by others and believing that the world cares about the details of our lives however, is not. If we, as a society, continue to place our attention on our physical selves, then empathy and the willingness to help others will inevitably decline further. This is a societal problem that we can afford. So, love yourself, but not too much.
By Samhita Misra
In the days that I used to be an avid blogger, I had a pet peeve. And that pet peeve was bloggers who posted editorials, look-books, collections or daily “inspiration.” I get it - once and a while you’re really busy, your inspiration has literally run dry and you know all your followers are going to love the new Mario Testino editorial with Karlie Kloss. (Note: I exclude mostly original content creators, writers and collage-makers from this group). So, why not guarantee a few comments without having to do much work?
Well, because there are those who despite their subpar resources – such as dated laptops and ancient digital cameras - go out and make their own stuff, or conceptualize each post, which requires a lot more thought than mindlessly digging through fashiongonerogue. I felt like this for a while, until at last, Drake himself put my sentiments to words:
“I’m really scared for my generation, you know. The thing that scares me most is Tumblr. I hate what Tumblr has become…Instead of kids going out and making their own moments, they’re just taking these images and living vicariously through other people’s moments. It just kills me.” And before it was killing Drake, it was killing the independent blogger spirit.
When you think of bloggers who consistently post material that isn’t theirs, if it’s not theirs, then whose is it? Using the case of fashion, since it is one of the top three Tumblr tags, these images belong to the likes of Style.com, Vogue, TeenVogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle and Marie Claire, owned by media conglomerates Condé Nast and Hearst Corporation, respectively.
To make matters worse, although Condé Nast does not allow their media properties to share content, rival Hearst Corporation, does. This means they can save money by sharing the same photographer, writer or videographer at the cost of limiting perspective and the diversity of content. Given that media content is already controlled by the few, reblogging their photos is really just perpetuating the status quo, especially since according to Tumblr CEO David Karp, fashion-related Tumblr posts are reblogged on a much greater scale than general Tumblr posts.
So, how exactly is this crushing the independent blogger spirit? For starters, it defeats the purpose of digitization, supposedly eliminating entry barriers to the media market by blurring the line between producer and consumer in what is known as the “prosumer.” It was supposed to be all about regular people fighting corporations with their own materials and giving the market variety. Instead, we’re using our Tumblr accounts to reblog unoriginal content owned in one form or another by conglomerates. This might give us instant gratification, a few more followers, notes or comments, and corporations free advertising platforms and dominance. It’s ironic given how much we complain about how pervasive advertising is when we willingly spread it ourselves.
A lot of this is rooted in the fact that sharing is fundamental to the micro-blogging experience that is Tumblr. It takes away the incentive to do it yourself; there is no need to with the plethora of high-quality images at your fingertips. It’s the same thing that happened way back, when the introduction of the written word discouraged people from memorizing the stories they were used to, because they didn’t have to anymore.
Despite the fact that ‘we don’t have to,’ if original and diverse content matters enough to us, we’ll listen to Drake and start making our own moments.
