(Montreal) Do you want to lose 100 pounds? You can do this with one click using the “100 lb down” filter, popular on the TikTok social network. A tendency that can have a negative impact on body image and incite behavior “violent for the body” to lose weight, warns a psychologist.
“I need to start going to the gym,” one TikTok user wrote in English, under a post that garnered 1.9 million “likes” where she uses the weight loss filter. And she is not the only one to have participated in the trend: dozens of videos of this kind can be viewed on the social network.
“Basically, what I thought was that it was mostly fat people who used this filter to project themselves and try to understand, or visualize […] what they would look like if they lost weight,” said Caroline Huard, better known as Loounie, vegan cookbook author and podcast host Flat belly: the culture of diets with Loounie.
But many thin people also use the filter, through a first application that makes them look bigger in their photos. Then, users apply the weight loss filter to it to create a TikTok video.
“It is harmful, because it confirms once again the idea that you are a better person, you are more desirable, when you have less weight. It comes once again to support that there is a hierarchy in the shape of our bodies, ”said Caroline Huard. The host, also a content producer, reminds us that body dissatisfaction is at the root of the culture of diets, but also of eating disorders.
This filter also concerns the DD Janick Coutu, a psychologist who works with people with eating disorders.
“I’m worried that it motivates people to have very violent behaviors for the body to lose that weight. It’s also very grossophobic as a filter, because the underlying message is that you have to lose 100 pounds to be more beautiful,” said the psychologist.
Filters also have a more insidious impact, which the professional’s patients may not be able to name.
“It leads to standards to be achieved that are completely unrealistic, since they are filtered, modified. What we observe in the studies is that even if young people know that the images are modified, the fact remains that it still builds an expectation, a standard, which they will want to achieve, ”explained Ms.me Coutu.
And some people can even develop an addiction to filters. “There is also a disconnection from the real appearance. So if I constantly use filters on my social networks, I can have difficulty with my image in my mirror. I can have the impression that it is not necessarily my face, that I prefer the face that I have on social networks, ”said the psychologist.
Spring: a difficult time
Just like the return of the holiday season, spring is fertile ground for the diet industry. The arrival of good weather and swimwear season has many people thinking about their weight.
“We are already in a fragile period for people who have body image difficulties, so on top of that, hammering out ideas of diet culture, grossophobia, it is indeed very harmful,” mentioned Janick Coutu, referring to the weight loss filter on TikTok.
And it’s also 1er to May 6 that the ÉquiLibre organization held Non-Diet Week.
“The idea is to understand that we don’t have full control over our weight. It’s not true that you can model it as easily as what you see with a filter, it’s very complicated and multifactorial, which determines the weight of a person. And in addition, there are many factors that are not controllable, such as genetics,” explained Andrée-Ann Dufour Bouchard, nutritionist and project manager at ÉquiLibre.
“The only thing we can do to improve our health is to gradually change our lifestyle habits, and make sure that it becomes things that we like to do, and that we can maintain in the long term. , because we have no control over the weight. That is still very ungrateful, but that’s how it is in life, in the biology of our body, ”added Ms.me Dufour Bouchard.
For Caroline Huard, it is important not to let our guard down on social networks, because even if the “100 lb down” filter begins to be denounced, another will inevitably take its place.
“I think it’s important to have a ‘feed’, to follow accounts that present the most diversified bodies possible, because our eyes will get used to it, and we’ll understand a little better what the normality, normality being diversity,” she stressed.
This dispatch was produced with financial assistance from the Meta Exchange and The Canadian Press for News.