The Winter Arc: Are Social Media Trends Fuelling the Resurgence of Diet Culture?
Image Credit: Todd Johnson / OSU Agricultural Communications Services
The rhetoric surrounding the perfect ‘summer body’ resurfaces annually to perpetuate diet culture and provide a platform for corporations to profit from individuals’ insecurities or anxieties. In an era of digitalisation, social media platforms form the network through which these negative ideals become targeted towards women, especially young women.
The latest trend to appear on TikTok is “The Winter Arc”, which is a creative reimagining of the ‘summer body’ phrasing to ensure that year-long young women become pressured to conform to diet culture and subscribe to various health and wellness fixes. In a 2020 survey published by University College London, it was reported that between 2005 and 2015 the percentage of teenagers attempting to lose weight had risen by 13.4%. The societal pressure to lose weight is often directed towards young women, and in turn, companies create products, fitness programmes and marketing campaigns with this demographic in mind.
Within this context, “The Winter Arc” is problematic because it creates a culture of consumption whereby individuals feel pressured to buy expensive gym memberships, new gym clothes, trainers, skincare products and expensive health food. The TikTok algorithm promotes these trends because engagement draws interest from large health, wellness and beauty advertisers that stand to profit from diet culture. It is opportunistic but also represents the larger problem of beauty standards in society.
To say “The Winter Arc” is a resurgence of diet culture is unfortunately untrue, as diet culture is consistently present in modern society. In reality, TikTok is creating trends that are increasingly visible and less discreet than previous reimaginings of weight loss trends, and these terms are repackaged and reestablished regularly by corporations aiming for profit. Trends like #WhatIEatInADay have been circulating social media for years, whilst the app Facetune, which allows users to edit their images, has over 160 million downloads globally. Trends like “The Winter Arc” are indicative of a widespread problem in society.
Though diet culture is persistent, in an increasingly digitalised world trends and narratives are readily available on mainstream and social media platforms. With increasing media visibility, and in an era of Ozempic and plastic surgery, these problems can seem new or part of a resurgence in diet culture. But the truth is that we are increasingly exposed to diet culture which results in increased conversation around body image in our communities. Across news media reporting, in tabloids and broadsheets, there is an excessive focus on celebrities’ appearance or sudden weight loss. The editorial director at British Vogue stated that the fashion industry should be worried about the return of extreme thinness on both the runway and the media. It could be argued that though there has been increasing diversity in body types in modelling and mainstream media in recent years, the underlying persistence of diet culture and pressures to be thin has not improved or changed greatly.
The presence of social media trends, such as “The Winter Arc” and #WhatIEatInADay, paired with the increasing thinness in the media due to Ozempic, generates extreme pressure on women to adhere to ever-changing beauty standards because they are targeted by the media and marketing campaigns. Social media platforms, centrally TikTok, have a responsibility to monitor the trends that circulate the app. On TikTok, when the #WhatIEatInADay trend appears, there is a disclaimer and a link to the charity Beat which helps people with eating disorders.
Though these trends are problematic, and social media platforms have a responsibility to protect people struggling with body image issues, these trends emerge from the social systems that put pressure on women to look a certain way. By acknowledging that these trends are repackaged and relabelled in attempts to generate insecurities and sell products, it becomes easier to examine the source of these social pressures. But, to create real change, we must unsubscribe from the beauty ideals imposed by societal pressure, as corporations would be forced to create marketing campaigns and products that are not based on diet culture.
Words by Sophie Gregory
