Cult of wellness | Tiktok bodychecking and the eating disorder recovery police
A chronically online examination of eating disorder recovery culture on the internet (TW: disordered eating)
I am far from the first person to lament the lack of nuance on Tiktok, but….
🎵“God, it’s brutal out here”. 🎵
If you are at all familiar with the eating disorder recovery world on the internet, you’ll know it’s a sensitive, high trigger space, for obvious reasons. This week there was a small controversy involving influencer Remi Bader and the eating disorder recovery community. If you are not chronically online, TLDR; Remi Bader, plus sized fashion influencer and unintentional body positive influencer posted a video last week (which happened to be National Eating Disorders Awareness Week) talking about how after struggling with her body image more than usual, she took herself to a wellness retreat at Canyon Ranch in the Berkshires.
In the video, she details how impactful the experience was at helping her reconnect to her body and inspiring her to recommit to her recovery from Binge Eating Disorder. Another content creator (it doesn’t matter who they are, because the sentiment is shared across a lot of personalities in the recovery space) commented asking Remi to make a disclaimer noting that well retreats are not a substitute for medical eating disorder treatment—to which Remi replied that she disagreed as she had learned more that weekend than in years of therapy. The other creator proceeded to make a response video explaining just how harmful it is for an influencer with Remi’s reach (2.2 million) to perpetuate that type of thinking…and Remi deleted the comments.
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