Body Fascism: SkinnyTok, the Far Right, and Why You Think You Want to Be Thin
How diet culture, wellness aesthetics, and authoritarian politics collide — and what it’s costing women’s health, autonomy, and power
Why this conversation matters
This episode was never meant to be comfortable.
It was born out of a growing, uneasy feeling I’ve had watching the cultural tide turn again. The return of extreme thinness. The rebranding of restriction as “discipline.” The moralisation of bodies under the guise of wellness. And all of it unfolding alongside a very real global shift toward authoritarian politics, the erosion of civil rights, and the resurgence of overtly misogynistic, racist, and fascist ideologies.
This isn’t about aesthetics.
It’s about power.
In this episode of Disgustingly Easy, I unpack why so many women genuinely believe they want to be thin, why that desire feels personal and innate, and why it is anything but. We look at how diet culture, racism, white supremacy, and the far right intersect. We talk about neurodivergence, regulation, praise, and the way women’s bodies have always been used as political battlegrounds. And we name what it actually takes to move against these forces.
This episode matters because the cost of not interrogating these narratives is paid with women’s health, autonomy, and lives.
Thinness is not neutral — and it never has been
One of the most persistent myths of diet culture is that wanting to be thin is simply a personal preference. That it’s neutral. Apolitical. Just “what I like.”
But when you slow that idea down, it doesn’t hold.
Across decades of coaching, social work, and academic study in sociology, behavioural science, and feminist theory, one pattern becomes impossible to ignore: when women gain power, beauty standards tighten. As women expand socially, politically, and economically, the acceptable female body shrinks.
This is not coincidence. It’s response.
Thinness functions as a disciplinary tool. It keeps women hungry, tired, preoccupied, and self-monitoring. It redirects energy away from collective action and toward self-surveillance. It rewards compliance and punishes deviation. And crucially, it frames all of this as “health,” “self-care,” or “personal choice.”
From Tumblr to SkinnyTok: the pipeline never disappeared
For many women, this conditioning didn’t start on TikTok.
It started in magazines, in family conversations about Weight Watchers, in the cultural dissection of women like Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson, and Christina Aguilera. It lived on Tumblr thinspo boards, in pro-ana forums, in praise disguised as concern.
SkinnyTok is not a new phenomenon. It is a simply a social media one.
What we’re seeing now is not a sudden obsession with thinness, but the return of an old playbook through new technology. Algorithms don’t radicalise people through force. They do it through familiarity. Through aesthetics that feel soothing, aspirational, and “aligned.” Clean eating. Pilates arms. Discipline framed as virtue. Purity framed as morality.
Like a frog in hot water, we don’t notice the temperature rising until the conditioning has already done its work.
Diet culture, racism, and the architecture of “health”
To understand why thinness holds the power it does, we have to look further back than Instagram.
Sociologist Sabrina Strings, in Fearing the Black Body, traces modern fatphobia to slavery and colonialism, where thinness became associated with whiteness, civility, self-control, and moral superiority. Fatness, meanwhile, was racialised, framed as excessive, undisciplined, and inferior.
These associations were not aesthetic. They were ideological. They were used to justify hierarchy, domination, and violence.
That history did not disappear. It was rebranded.
Today, those same values are embedded in our health systems, our beauty standards, and even the metrics we use to define a “good” body. Research published in the AMA Journal of Ethics has shown that tools like BMI were shaped by eugenics and white embodiment ideals, not neutral science. Thin privilege is real, measurable, and pervasive, particularly in healthcare, employment, and media representation.
So when women internalise the belief that being smaller makes them better, healthier, or more worthy, they are not failing. They are absorbing a system that was designed long before them.
Rejecting diet culture, then, is not just a personal act.
It is a political one.
Why thinness is back — and why it’s dangerous
We have been here before.
The 90s ushered in heroin chic, size zero, and the glorification of visible fragility. That era followed directly on the heels of second-wave feminism, when women entered the workforce en masse and began openly challenging traditional gender roles.
As women took up more social space, the ideal body took up less physical space.
Today, we are witnessing another wave of feminist progress, alongside increased visibility of queer, trans, disabled, and neurodivergent bodies. And right on cue, thinness has returned. Not alone, but alongside a resurgence of racist rhetoric, the rise of neo-Nazi and hyper-masculine alt-right movements, and the rollback of reproductive rights under the banner of “family values.”
This is well-documented. Studied. Evidence-based.
Authoritarian movements have always cared deeply about bodies. Who controls them. Who disciplines them. Who is allowed to take up space.
The cost of shrinking — and the alternative
This conversation is not about declaring thinness “wrong.” Bodies are morally neutral.
The problem arises when the pursuit of thinness overrides real markers of health: strength, energy, hormonal function, bone density, quality of life.
We are already seeing the consequences. Rising rates of osteopenia and osteoporosis in women far younger than expected. Stress fractures. Loss of menstrual cycles. Chronic fatigue. Nervous systems stuck in survival mode.
A body that is under-fuelled is not a healthy body.
A skinny body is not automatically a strong one.
The alternative is not apathy. It is resistance.
Training for strength rather than punishment. Fuelling for capacity rather than control. Shifting the question from “what does my body look like?” to “what can my body do?” Strength, in this context, is not just physical. It is psychological. Emotional. Political.
Shrinking never made me safe. Strength did.
If this landed for you
If reading this stirred something in you, the full episode goes deeper. Much deeper.
🎧 Listen to the full conversation
You can listen to this episode of the Disgustingly Easy Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
This is not about becoming smaller.
It’s about becoming harder to control.
And that’s the long game.