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It was kind of like the perfect storm in a sewer that was dumb.
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Chicago, a white woman's murder, a black man behind bars for a crime he didn't commit.
90 years of killing somebody I have never seen.
The Crying Wolf Podcast is the story of a corrupt detective, two men bound by injustice and the quest for redemption, no matter the price.
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Hey, I'm Kal Penn and on my new podcast, Here We Go Again.
We'll take today's trends and headlines and ask why does history keep repeating itself?
Each week, I'm calling up my friends like Bill Nye, Lilly Singh, and Pete Buttigieg to talk about everything from the space race to movie remakes to psychedelics.
Put another way, are you high?
Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now, but my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future.
Listen and subscribe to.
Here We Go Again with Cal Penn on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
I live below a cult leader, and I fear I've angered her.
Wait a minute, Sophia.
How do you know she's a cult leader?
Well Dakota, luckily it's.
I'm Not Afraid of a Scary Story Week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon.
This person writes My neighbor has been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals and now my ceiling is collapsing.
I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder.
I think they might be part of a cult.
Hold up!
A real-life cult?
And what is a dirt ritual?
No clue. clue, Dakota.
Find out how it ends.
Listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hello everybody and welcome back to the Psychology of Your 20s, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.
Hello everybody.
Before we get into it, I just wanted to pop in here and let you know that this episode will deal with some pretty extreme concepts around disordered eating, weight gain and weight loss.
If this is something that is triggering for you or may upset you, or you just aren't in the right mental headspace to hear it, please feel free to skip this episode and return to it later on.
We will also have resources below if you are looking for some extra help.
Hello everybody, welcome back to the show, welcome back to the podcast.
New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world, it is so great to have you here back for another episode, as we, of course, break down the psychology of our 20s.
So...
I have a feeling that today's chat is going to be a big one because honestly, I have been wanting to talk about this topic for some time.
You can obviously probably feel my passion, or rather I don't know like frustration already coming across.
But before I did so, I wanted to just like sit with my thoughts for a little bit, have some reflections, talk to the trusted advisors.
I also want to thank our research assistant, Libby Colbert, for her help on this episode, and a friend of the show, Erin Somerville, who is an assistant psychologist and therapist that works with people who have eating disorders.
Her opinions and thoughts were so valuable.
So big shout out and thank you to Erin and Libby for helping with this episode today.
But again Basically, as I said, I wanted to make sure that my thoughts were coherent and in the right place.
Today, of course, we are talking about skinny talk.
You likely have seen things about this if you are at all online.
It is basically a social media hashtag, social media trend glorifying distorted eating and unhealthy habits behind the guise of how good it feels to be skinny and how you can do it yourself.
Now, at first glance you might think that this looks like harmless training tips or meal inspo or body positivity for naturally thinner people out there.
It's actually so much more complex and layered than that.
And one of the most dangerous intersections between body image, social media, gender disordered eating that I've seen in a long time.
And I say this seen in some time or seen in a long time, because if you are of a certain generation, you have most certainly seen this before.
I don't know if you guys grew up on tumblr or the side of tumblr that i grew up on, but back in the day what like 2014 back in the day, it was literally a free-for-all on the most, like heinous tips and tricks to basically become as skinny as possible as fast as possible.
How long until we figured out that those were basically just laxatives?
That's like a whole story for another time.
And you know, on these sites like being skinny was romanticized as this, like fix for all of your problems.
I remember so many black and white images of thigh gaps, rib cages, crazy waistlines And Skinny Talk.
It's just a whole new version of that, in different packaging.
And what's so dangerous about it is that it's a lot less easy to spot, as it perhaps probably was in the past.
So this is what I want to explore today.
I want to dive into the ways that we can understand what content is Skinny Talk aligned and what is not, the crossovers with disordered eating, and what this trend towards extreme thinness is really saying about society more broadly and more psychologically.
Where is this all coming from?
Of course, we're also going to finish up on some ways that you can counteract skinny talk in your own life.
I obviously want to finish this episode with some hope rather than despair, but yeah, it's going to be a big one.
With that all being said, I hope you are ready.
Let's get into the psychology of skinny talk.
So if you are coming into this completely blind and have no idea what skinny talk is, it's basically a set of viral trends on social media platforms that promote extremely thin body ideals, promotes rapid weight loss tactics, a lot of what I eat in a day, videos with like enough calories for a literal child.
The glorification of extreme thinness.
No, not for body positivity sake or for health and fitness sake, but for aesthetic sake.
Skinny Talk essentially began as a hashtag that people could use to bookmark their content as being aligned with extreme weight loss or extreme dieting.
But as with any trend, at some stage it kind of broke free from its corner of the internet and began to become mainstream and popularized.
Not because of how often this hashtag was being used that is obviously one component of it but because of how dramatic and shocking some of these videos were.
Visible rib cages, visible hip bones, visible collarbones, thigh gaps, extreme weight loss transformations that honestly, could only make you just like gawk in shock and just be like wow, like I can't believe people look like this.
Without asking you to go looking for these videos.
Some of the examples of videos like this that I've seen are a Russian model eating 500 calories a day because she wants to feel controlled and lean.
Five foot eight women who you know, on her video says I weigh 42 kilos and the caption is peak feminine physique.
Videos of very tiny women with the caption being skinny is an outfit.
Another video that like comes to mind was a girl saying you need a treat.
What are you a dog?
Exactly.
Like go drink your green tea, babe.
The shock value of these videos is really what caused this trend to go viral.
Psychologically, we know this.
When we see something that is novel, that is shocking, that is so counter to the norm of what we expect, I guess, human bodies even to look like or so morally outrageous in some cases, like telling people that if they want a sweet treat they're as good as a dog.
Like we respond, we can't help ourselves.
And our response is what rewards this content through engagement.
Therefore, training the algorithm to show this to more people and training people to produce more of this content.
I really want to be incredibly clear here.
It's not just that these people are thin.
Thin people obviously exist in the world.
And like, I really can't think of anything wrong with that.
It's that they are promoting this unnatural thinness on their physique that they have obviously obtained through extreme restriction as an ideal that, if you do not achieve, it's because it says something about your character.
And they're also doing it in a way that is meant to be shocking and that is meant to be a form of engagement or entertainment.
I saw an article by the National Alliance for Eating Disorders, based in the US, that said before the skinny talk hashtag was banned in June this year, it had over half a million posts associated with it.
And we know, just because a hashtag disappears doesn't mean the content hasn't already had a cultural impact.
And it also doesn't mean that people aren't still making it.
Like the content, this kind of content is kind of like a virus.
It just evolves and it begins to conceal itself behind new masks and new hashtags healthy lifestyle hashtags, nutrition hashtags, model diet hashtags.
What's so insidious is that it's not always possible to tell whether a piece of content is just somebody sharing their life, sharing fitspiration, sharing the natural way their body is, or leaning into the deeply dangerous parts of diet culture and the glorification of extreme thinness.
There are a few key giveaways though.
The first way to identify if a piece of content is skinny talk is the body checking.
Body checking refers to the repeated habit of visually or physically, basically like inspecting your body and inspecting your form, either in the mirror, in clothes, in photographs or in videos, and it's a form of seeking reassurance and seeking validation.
And The focus in skinny talk content is always on the body how it looks, which bones are visible, the size of one's waist in comparison to everyday objects, the exaggeration of how thin somebody is.
The extreme thinness of one's body is the entertainment.
And a 2024 study.
Researchers from here in Australia basically conducted this massive search on TikTok and looked at over 250 videos from the five most popular diet related hashtags.
They found that 57% of these videos involved elements of body checking.
It involved elements of the creator repeatedly checking and hyper fixating on their own body, either in the mirror or on video, or on their phone.
So body checking is the biggest one.
The second biggest giveaway is how food is talked about.
Firstly, in these videos, food is often assigned a numerical value or label, often how many calories it has.
And normally this numerical value determines the food's moral label.
Foods being described as good or bad, clean or junk, safe or dangerous, nice or.
This moral label then seems to describe the morality of the person who is consuming it.
You know, if they ate the bad food with more calories, they are bad.
They were bad that day.
If they ate the good food with less calories, they were good that day.
All of this is seemingly determined by a number attached to a piece of food.
And, you know, the food doesn't care.
Like the food is just here to give you energy and to give you nutrition.
It doesn't, it isn't a moral thing.
Like a food is objectively not bad.
It is just a food.
It It's not a sentient, like adamant thing.
It just exists.
But the role of food on Skinny Talk is something to be controlled and something to be policed and something to be moralized.
And that's why it has just as much of a focus as like the human body and the thinness.
The third giveaway is kind of linked to both of these things.
It's an extension of this idea that food has morality, and it's the idea that how you look determines your morality and your value.
Often there is a specific twist within all of this content.
The thin body is celebrated, not just for being thin because, like I said, some people just naturally are, but for being controlled, for being clean, for being disciplined.
This is what signifies that this person is better than the viewer, because they have something that you could never have.
They have the willpower to look the way they do, which is honestly a ridiculous use of willpower.
Like if you have that much willpower, maybe you should use that for something else.
But you know, for them, this willpower is a sign that they're better than you and that they have value and that they are able to dedicate themselves to this I don't know project of making their body as visually appealing and aesthetic as they can.
This is really, I think, the biggest thing that distinguishes general healthy living, weight loss content on social media platforms which honestly, I don't really have an issue with from Skinny Talk.
It's the fact that it goes beyond health.
It goes beyond loving your body.
It goes beyond trying to do the right thing by your body and into making your body a moral and visual symbol for your perceived value as an individual, even if the body actually suffers.
Your body, your hunger is something to be suppressed, restricted, disciplined, not listened to.
I think this trend really speaks to a cultural mood of if you can just manage your body, you wouldn't have any problems.
Rather than what systems created body dissatisfaction in the first place.
What is actually creating problems with our health, with self-worth, with self-appraisal.
This is why Skinny Talk is highly conservative, in the sense that it preserves ideals rather than dismantling them.
You may have seen this argument being raised online, but you know the essential idea is that skinny talk isn't just diet content.
It's not just fitness motivation.
It's quite political.
The messaging pushed through this kind of content actually mirrors the rise in conservative ideas around gender, around our bodies, around individual responsibility.
There was a really interesting article published in April by Lois Sherring and she explores how far-right groups are increasingly using thinness and body shaming in their recruitment strategies for girls and young women.
Now, that's not through obvious political slogans.
It's through aesthetic cues, a kind of soft focused femininity, built on being controlled and disciplined and having restraint and being petite and small and tiny.
In this framing, you know, the female body is kind of held up as something quite pure and orderly and morally superior, in contrast to what far right groups you know describe the world as which is chaotic excessive, undisciplined.
Thinness becomes a way to signal belonging, a way to show that you are in control of yourself, whilst this world around us, you know, goes crazy.
And this matters.
You might be thinking this seems a little bit far-fetched.
I get it.
I think the first time I heard this idea, I was like, that's kind of wild.
But it matters, because the research does show us that political beliefs literally shape how you view your own body and how you view others' bodies as well.
One study published in the journal Nature in 2021 actually presented participants with computer-generated body shapes and found that people who identified with more conservative ideologies tended to view thinner bodies as more competent, more responsible, more morally virtuous.
Those exact same bodies were perceived differently depending on the viewer's ideology.
People who were more liberal or left-leaning tended, you know, kind of didn't really care and didn't really have a preference either way.
Another research paper looking at the link between body ideals and conservative or authoritarian ideologies also demonstrated this.
Researchers at the University of Bristol and the University of York looked at a representative nationwide sample of 2000 people And they captured their answers to this thing called the British Social Attitude Survey to kind of see what is the link between political ideology and how people talk about weight, how they view weight, how they view size.
What they found was that weight stigmatizing attitudes were more commonly associated with people who had extreme right wing, authoritarian values.
People who had these values were also significantly more likely to believe that larger bodies reflected moral failure.
Now again.
This is not to say that every creator making a what I eat in a day video is aligned with the far right.
It's also not to say that everybody who is naturally thin thinks that they are morally superior.
It's just like, don't take this out of context.
It's just really interesting research to just see how trends connect with political attitudes of the time and And those trends deeply impact how we see our bodies and how we see ourselves.
The underlying narrative to this whole culture is smaller is better, being controlled is virtuous and your worth is visible in how little space you take up.
Okay, with that in mind, we are going to take a short break.
When we return, let's discuss a few other explanations for why Skinny Talk has managed to capture so much of our attention and some of the consequences of this prevailing backtrend towards extreme, unhealthy thinness.
Stay with us.
The Crying Wolf podcast is the story of two men bound by injustice, of a city haunted by its secrets and the quest for redemption, no matter the price.
White victim, female, pretty, wealthy, black defendant.
Chicago, a white woman's murder, a black man behind bars for a crime he didn't commit.
I got 90 years for killing somebody I have never seen before.
He says the police are his friends, and then that's it.
They turn on him.
A corrupt detective.
How he was interrogated, the techniques.
That's crazy.
A snitch and a life stolen.
They got the wrong guy.
But on the inside, Lee Harris finds an ally in his celly Robert, who swears to tell the truth about what happened to Lee and free his friend.
If you're with me, you're golden.
I'll take care of you.
I'm going to be with you.
You stuck with me for life.
Listen to The Crying Wolf Podcast starting on October 22nd on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Here we go.
Hey, I'm Cal Penn and on my new podcast, Here We Go Again.
We'll take today's trends and headlines and ask why does history keep repeating itself?
You may know me as the second hottest actor from the Harold and Kumar movies, but I'm also an author, a White House staffer and, as of like 15 seconds ago, a podcast host.
Along the way, I've made some friends who are experts in science, politics, and pop culture.
And each week, one of them will be joining me to answer my burning questions.
Like, are we heading towards another financial crash like in 08?
Is non-monogamy back in style?
And how come there's never a gate ready for your flight when it lands like two minutes early?
We've got guests like Pete Buttigieg, Stacey Abrams, Lilly Singh, and Bill Nye.
When you start weaponizing outer space, things can potentially go really wrong.
Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now, because it is.
But my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future.
Listen and subscribe to.
Here We Go Again with Cal Penn on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
The Big Take podcast from Bloomberg News dives deep into one big global business story every weekday.
A shutdown means we don't get the data, but it also means for President Trump that there's no chance of bad news on the labor market.
What does a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich reveal about the economy?
Our breakfast foods are consistent consumer staples, and so they sort of become outsized indicators of inflation.
What's behind Elon Musk's trillion dollar payout?
There's a sort of concerted effort to message that Musk is coming back.
He's putting politics aside.
He's left the White House.
And what can the PCE tell you that the CPI can't?
CPI tries to measure out-of-pocket costs that consumers are paying for things, whereas the PCE index that the Fed targets is a little bit broader of a measure.
Listen to The Big Take from Bloomberg News every weekday afternoon on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
I live below a cult leader, and I fear I've angered her.
Well, wait a minute, Sophia.
How do you know she's a cult leader?
Well Dakota, luckily it's.
I'm Not Afraid of a Scary Story Week on the OK Storytime podcast, so you'll find out soon.
This person writes my neighbor has been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals and now my ceiling is collapsing.
I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder.
I think they may be part of a cult.
Hold up, Sophia.
A real life cult?
And what is a dirt ritual?
No clue.
But, according to this person, contractors are tearing down the patio to find out what's going on with their ceiling, and her neighbors are not happy.
Well, she needs to report them ASAP.
She did!
And now they've been confronting her in really creepy ways all the time.
So do we find out if this person survives their neighborhood cult or not?
To hear the explosive finale.
Listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Okay, so we can't talk about Skinny Talk without talking about the rise of weight loss drugs, because it seems that they have really been increasing in parallel.
To be honest, I'll make it super clear I really have no judgment on whether you choose to use weight loss drugs or Or not.
I have friends who do.
I've seen it change their life.
I also know, as someone who has never been small who will never be small because I'm 5'8, with broad shoulders and the child of literal athletes that when you are bigger, whatever you do is scrutinized right.
You choose to take weight loss drugs, you are shamed.
You choose to accept your body, you're also shamed.
You choose to do it naturally or lose weight, also shamed.
There's always these two sides that either want you to drastically change who you are or want you to stay exactly in the form that you are, and you're going to receive pressure from each, whichever decision you choose.
I was listening to an episode of maintenance phase where the host, aubrey gordon, said something along the lines of when you're fat, people are obsessed with your health, like it's something that is their business or it's something that is impacting them, And I think you can't escape it.
Now, the thing is, is that weight loss drugs also have health consequences.
But again, if you're overweight and you're taking it, you know your health is not anybody else's business but your own.
It's your personal choice.
How you want to relate and treat your body is up to you.
Kind of the same with skinny talk, right?
These people making these videos.
If that's the approach you want to have to your body like, that's up to you, as harmful or unharmful as you think it is.
But when it comes to either of those things, you can't ignore how that choice has come about.
Has it come from a desire to be healthy or a desire for aesthetics?
And can we say that the same intention is what everybody has?
The thing is, Ozempic does change people's lives and is really important for certain medical conditions and people who are really struggling to regulate their appetite and their weight and, if they have type 2 diabetes, that aspect of it as well.
However, I think now it's become something more than medical.
It's become a trend.
And some of the skinny talk content we see about how life is just better when you're skinny and tiny, how being thin is the outfit is people who readily say like oh Zempik, got me this body.
And that acts as not just a form of honesty and sharing, but as an advertisement, a subliminal advertisement that this is who I am now.
This is admirable.
This is a respectable physical physique.
Here's how I got it.
And I'm not going to tell you.
Obviously, they can't tell you if it's right for you.
But of course people are going to see that and think that kind of transformation is something that would make me happier.
Here's the thing.
When these medications enter the culture of aesthetics, and just enter the culture in general, they carry messages.
Some of those messages are helpful for people who truly need them, but many are harmful when they slip into the aesthetic or marketing sphere, because this drug is at the end of the day.
You know, the pharmaceutical industry doesn't create drugs to help people and to change lives.
That's obviously what they say they're doing.
But if there was no market for them, there's no way they would do it.
They are making these drugs to make money and therefore they are marketing them to make money, regardless of who might be hurt by that decision.
They want as many customers as possible.
And, as a result, it can amplify the logic of things like skinny talk that if you are thin, you are valued.
And here is an easy way that doesn't really include health as a central part of the conversation, but as a secondary thought that you can achieve this.
Thinness still prevails as this goal that we all need to achieve.
And now, with the use of these weight loss drugs, that culture is being accelerated at a level that is really dangerously driving demand.
Now obviously, it would be great to say that weight loss drugs are only being used by people that need them or for reasons unrelated to physical appearance.
And even if they are being used for physical appearance for people who again, are seriously at a point where they don't feel healthy about themselves, that's just simply not the case.
I saw a video of someone the other day who was like I want to lose.
I don't want to be too specific, but she was like I want to lose a certain amount of weight by Christmas and I'm thinking about going on ozempic to do that and she weighed.
She weighed 65 kilos and I was like that just seems so bizarre that you would risk your health to take a medication that it seems like, from my perspective, that your body doesn't really need.
And the risk is is that when we tie our worth to what it says on the scale or how we look, you will do drastic things like go on a serious medication to maintain or to gain the physique of the moment and to match the, the shape and the body form that is currently in circulation.
I feel like every one of us has had that moment where we're just like Beauty standards are so exhausting.
Like every two to three years, our bodies are expected to change to stay in line with what is expected of the human physique and what is beautiful.
It's like we're a piece of clay.
One year we need to take off a piece, the next year we need to put it back on.
Then we need to squeeze these bits in and the next year expand these bits back out.
Thinness has been in and out of trend for over a hundred years, and this hurts every body type, whether you're naturally thin or not, whether you're naturally curvy or not, because when one is in, the other one has to be out.
When thinness is in, the curvy girls are made to feel terrible.
When the curves are in.
If you're thin, you know.
Now it's your turn to hate yourself.
For a to be back into what is hot and what is fit and what is trending.
In the 1920s we had the women's kind of flapper fashion, which was built around thinness and boyish figures.
In the 1960s we saw a resurgence of that when models like Twiggy were.
You know, they were tiny, they were adored.
Then we had the 1990s where like heroin chic was like really the trend, coffee, cocaine, cigarettes, like that's the goal that everybody aspired to.
But in between that, we also had moments where...
Having a BBL or being really curvy or very voluptuous was also the ideal and was what was admired.
It just constantly changes back and forth.
And nowadays it changes even more rapidly because it changes according to the algorithm, which basically replaces itself every two months.
Instead of like one particular magazine cover or particular model, like setting the tone, like we scroll past hundreds of bodies an hour.
Alpha You page learns what we hover over, what we rewatch, what we feel an emotional response to.
The ideal becomes not just aspirational.
But this like echo chamber of this is normal, because this is all I'm seeing online.
And because trends change, because skinny talk won't be the final trend, just like getting a BBL wasn't either.
What happens then?
What happens when, for example, you have gotten on a drug like Ozempic that you'll never be able to stop taking, a drug that can destroy your digestive system?
What happens when next year the new ideal body emerges and it's something that you can't achieve?
It's just always going to keep you on your feet.
This is where the concept of effective forecasting comes in.
The idea that Once I look like that, then I'll be confident.
Once I weigh less than X kilos, then I'll be happy and doing anything you can to get there.
Studies show the opposite.
Body dissatisfaction tends to stay the same or even increase once you achieve your ideal body.
Because the goalpost always moves.
It's always going to be one inch away from where you are now.
It's why suddenly, like having really toned abs and arms is like the new thing, because now that skinny is achievable for anybody.
If they want to get on these weight loss drugs, what's the next thing?
Physique that people can gatekeep.
Because the beauty ideal can't be everybody, otherwise there's nothing to sell us.
With that in mind, let's talk about the damage and impact of skinny talk, starting with the obvious one a rise in eating disorders.
In the past decade, rates of anorexia and bulimia have almost doubled.
One 2025 study actually suggested that the biggest spike in these rates, obviously accounting for population growth, has occurred in the last two years.
Let me be very clear.
Anorexia in particular is the most dangerous mental disorder in the world.
It is the most deadly, the most expensive to treat, it has the highest rate of relapse and it does significant long-term damage to our bodies that they might never recover from.
Imagine every day entering a space and someone at the door tells you hey, there's a chance you could develop a life-altering, deadly illness if you walk through that door today.
Do you still go in?
Would you do it?
That's what it's like going on TikTok and Instagram at the moment, especially if you're young, especially if you're a teenager.
And if you think that's dramatic, linking social media usage and the development of an eating disorder, I want to tell you about a 2020 review that looked at 50 studies across 17 countries with over 10000 participants.
That concluded that One of the most plausible and significant risk factors for the development of an eating disorder is social media usage specifically, exposure to thin or fit ideals, exposure to appearance-based content and social media trends relating to dieting, body composition and fitness.
One of the conceptual models that this study proposes is actually what we call a self-perpetuating cycle of risk, where people Social media use increases body image concerns, which increases disordered eating.
Further feeding into social media use and comparison.
These trends, I cannot express.
They literally ruin people's lives.
They ruin their lives and their health for years to come.
Being 20 kilos 10 kilos overweight is nothing compared to being extremely thin and dieting and restricting your body of nutrition, especially during formative years of your life.
And we know that these trends touch everybody.
Their emotional grip is in the minds of anybody who has ever felt pressure to meet a beauty standard or an attractiveness standard, but for girls in particular, young girls and women.
The background noise is pretty intense.
I think female bodies have always kind of been sites of public commentary.
Our bodies are evaluated before we can even speak.
We learn very young that bodies are not just ours.
Like they are things that will be looked at and judged approved, dismissed.
Compared what we weigh, how we look, how much space we take up.
All of it becomes a kind of social currency.
It becomes a way to keep us in check.
And we understand that.
I couldn't tell you the amount of times a man has disagreed with me on the internet or come across something about my content he doesn't like.
And his first reaction is to call me fat because he knows that is a way to put me in my place.
You know, I ran a half marathon this year.
I exercise every single day.
I honestly love my body after years of not, and it still bothers me because it's such a cultural means of control to comment on a woman's body to make her feel bad enough that she will shut up.
There's research showing that girls internalize body surveillance the sense of like watching themselves and being watched much more intensely and much more early on than boys.
And this is what is known as self-objectification.
When you start living in your body as something that is seen rather than something that you feel.
Over time it feels like your body is a project, a visual project, a moral project for others to critique.
It is something to manage rather than nourish and really appreciate.
And when we look at how body image develops, we see this pattern over and over again.
Girls who feel watched learn to watch themselves.
Girls who are praised for being small learn to shrink.
Girls who see women apologizing for eating cake, they learn to apologize for hunger.
So you see how these trends literally shape the psychology of people witnessing them.
There's another disorder we have to talk about here as well.
I'm sure you've already heard expected me to talk about it.
It's orthorexia nervosa.
Orthorexia is basically described as a fixation on healthy eating to the point where it becomes unhealthy.
It's this familiar pattern of eating only strictly clean foods, moralizing food categories into unhealthy, good and bad, excluding entire food groups.
Like your body doesn't need those things tracking calories, tracking macros rigidly overall, just letting food control your life by trying to control it.
But behind the mask of this is healthy.
It's so hard to draw the line between caring about nutrition and food because you do care about your health and because objectively, some foods are better for your body, and caring about it because this is just another form of psychological control or maladaptive coping.
I can't control my life.
I can't control my past.
I can't control the future.
I can control what I eat.
Thinking about food obsessively is not normal, unless maybe you have severe allergies or intolerances, or you are literally starving.
You know, especially if you're in your 20s and you're healthy and you're feeling good and you're functioning at the level that you want, there's no need to be extreme dieting.
There's a huge distinction between making healthy choices, being conscious of your diet, and a rigorous, all-consuming obsession with food and bad foods.
That is about really, underneath it all restriction and control.
The real question to ask is if you see these videos of people talking about healthy eating, if you see these videos of people talking about calories and macros, is this decision costing them more life than it's giving them?
That is a real way to identify when something is disordered.
Because for some of them, that's not disordered eating.
If it is costing their life more than it is giving their life, that's disordered.
When I was in my late teens.
The amount I thought about food because I was going through something similar to this made my whole world so much smaller.
I remember going on a trip to New York with my family and just not enjoying it because all I thought about was food and I couldn't participate because it wasn't healthy.
It wasn't aligned with how many calories I was allowed for that day.
All you think about is food all of the time.
There is like not much room for anything else.
And it's so not only physically unhealthy, but like mentally exhausting.
Now again back to Skinny Talk.
We think that Skinny Talk might only be linked to eating disorders like anorexia.
It's actually more linked to orthorexia.
A 2022 survey carried out in Italy looked at a sample of 4000 participants and found that, for participants who reported using social media for over 60 minutes a day, the prevalence of orthorexia was significantly higher.
We see this as clear as day, especially in like the gym community and on like gym TikTok.
It's become really normalized to do these like healthy meal swaps.
For me.
I absolutely hate those like no carb, no sugar, protein powder filled.
Fixes that like come up as recommendations.
You know, I used to eat those.
They literally just taste disgusting.
And you know what?
You can eat what you want.
Maybe if you like that, like go for it.
If that's your cup of tea, like I don't have an issue with it.
Feed your body what you want and what it wants.
It's just that there's an underlying discomfort and shame so many people feel if they don't eat that healthy version that restricts them from being able to participate in everyday life.
You know, I shouldn't eat that burger.
That biscuit is bad to the point where, again, life gets smaller.
This isn't just about a trend.
This isn't just about a body ideal.
This is about the quality of your one true miraculous, wonderful life that you are like.
You are putting joy and happiness on hold to meet a construct that probably wouldn't be real if you weren't online.
Okay, we're going to take another short break here.
But when we return, let's talk about what the heck we can do about this.
And, you know, how we can counteract the skinny talk influence in everyday life.
Stay with us.
Here we go.
Hey, I'm Cal Penn.
And on my new podcast, Here We Go Again.
We'll take today's trends and headlines and ask why does history keep repeating itself?
You may know me as the second hottest actor from the Harold and Kumar movies, but I'm also an author, a White House staffer and, as of like 15 seconds ago, a podcast host.
Along the way, I've made some friends who are experts in science, politics and pop culture.
And each week, one of them will be joining me to answer my burning questions.
Like, are we heading towards another financial crash like in 08?
Is non monogamy back in style?
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We've got guests like Pete Buttigieg, Stacey Abrams, Lilly Singh and Bill Nye.
When you start weaponizing outer space, things can potentially go really wrong.
Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now because it is.
But my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future.
Listen and subscribe to.
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The Crying Wolf podcast is the story of two men bound by injustice, of a city haunted by its secrets and the quest for redemption, no matter the price.
White victim, female, pretty, wealthy, black defendant.
Chicago, a white woman's murder, a black man behind bars for a crime he didn't commit.
I got 90 years for killing somebody I have never seen.
He says the police are his friends, and then that's it.
They turn on him.
A corrupt detective.
How he was interrogated, the techniques.
That's crazy.
A snitch and a life stolen.
They got the wrong guy.
But on the inside, Lee Harris finds an ally in his celly Robert, who swears to tell the truth about what happened to Lee and free his friend.
If you're with me, you're golden.
I'll take care of you.
I'm going to be with you.
You stuck with me for life.
Listen to The Crying Wolf podcast starting on October 22nd on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
The Big Take podcast from Bloomberg News dives deep into one big global business story every weekday.
A shutdown means we don't get the data, but it also means for President Trump that there's no chance of bad news on the labor market.
What does a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich reveal about the economy?
Our breakfast foods are consistent consumer staples, and so they sort of become outsized indicators of inflation.
What's behind Elon Musk's trillion dollar payout?
There's a sort of concerted effort to message that Musk is coming back.
He's putting politics aside.
He's left the White House.
And what can the PCE tell you that the CPI can't?
CPI tries to measure out-of-pocket costs that consumers are paying for things, whereas the PCE index that the Fed targets is a little bit broader of a measure.
Listen to The Big Take from Bloomberg News every weekday afternoon on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
I live below a cult leader, and I fear I've angered her.
Well, wait a minute, Sophia.
How do you know she's a cult leader?
Well Dakota, luckily it's.
I'm Not Afraid of a Scary Story Week on the OK Storytime podcast, so you'll find out soon.
This person writes my neighbor has been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals and now my ceiling is collapsing.
I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder.
I think they may be part of a cult.
Hold up, Sophia.
A real life cult?
And what is a dirt ritual?
No clue.
But, according to this person, contractors are tearing down the patio to find out what's going on with their ceiling, and her neighbors are not happy.
Well, she needs to report them ASAP.
She did!
And now they've been confronting her in really creepy ways all the time.
So do we find out if this person survives their neighborhood cult or not?
To hear the explosive finale.
Listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm obviously not going to end the episode being like, this all sucks.
Good luck out there.
That's not how we're going to do this.
Instead, I want to give you some things to do or some exercises to avoid the influence of skinny talk as much as you can.
I think honestly, by listening to this, you'll have checked the first thing off the list, which is just being more aware of what kind of content you're consuming.
Just in general.
You know, once you've seen and once you can see the content clearly, you do get to like decide how you want to respond to it, rather than just letting its tentacles like slither into your mind because the mere exposure effect here is powerful.
Just repeatedly seeing something, even if you don't think you're engaging with it on a deeper level, does have an impact on how you will go on to view your body.
You don't need to overhaul your entire life.
You don't need to delete TikTok entirely.
Flee to the woods, become digitally isolated although I feel like a lot of us kind of want to at this point but you don't have to.
Sometimes the simplest starting point is just recognizing what you're looking at, noticing the tone, noticing the body checking, noticing the rituals of control, noticing how they're romanticizing something that is probably unhealthy, and just pausing and putting a buffer between you and that content.
Just critically analyzing what you have seen and thinking to yourself.
You know, how many people do I see who actually look like this.
What kind of dark thoughts might this be bringing up for me?
Are they going to actually lead me down a better path?
Is being involved in this content going to make me a better person?
This is when you can really use like obviously, the tools of TikTok or Instagram to just say not interested.
I honestly, the moment I see a piece of content come out for somebody that is very obviously skinny talk, aligned like, I just block their account.
I just, I don't want to see it.
Like, I just, I don't want to see it.
I respect them being able to do what they want with their body.
I just don't want it to influence how I see my body.
And that really does work too.
And I've seen it work to reshape my algorithm.
Like the good thing about the algorithm, good.
The good thing about the algorithm is that it is trainable.
It's boringly obedient.
So if you stop liking or lingering on those videos, if you quietly unfollow or block creators who make you feel smaller, feel that you need to be smaller in your own life, your feed will change.
And when your feed changes.
Obviously, we all spend a lot of time online.
Your environment changes, your thoughts change and your habits change.
This is what we call rewiring your online environment.
It's the same way that you should.
You know that if you were friends with a terrible person in your life and you cut them out, your life would probably get better.
It's the same reason why we say you should wash your bedsheets or you should invest in getting good lighting in your home.
Like what's in your environment, the content, the people, the environment you consume has an impact.
Make sure you are being cautious with it.
I also think, when you feel the need to meet the trend, truly ask yourself are there things my body isn't capable of doing right now that being thinner is going to help me with?
Let's be real.
Maybe you don't feel great in your body.
Maybe you do feel sluggish.
You do think that you could exercise more, show your body more love.
Is being that level of thin going to fix that?
Is drastic weight loss going to help you?
Chances are, eating 1200 calories a day or less probably isn't going to be aligned with the healthiest version that you can be.
Skinny talk is one version of somebody's idea of health.
Don't let it be the only version.
What is your body calling for?
That is maybe more holistic, more balanced, more sustainable, more right for you.
Or does something maybe just actually not need to change at all?
You know, if you weren't online, if you weren't seeing these videos, would you know naturally organically, that anything was wrong with your body.
If the answer is no, you don't need to change.
It's the same with all kinds of marketing, right?
Skinny Talk is trying to convince you that this and this only will change your life.
This lip product, this bag, this new lamp, this diet.
It's probably not true.
In fact, it's definitely not true.
You I was also incapable of running for longer than five minutes.
I was always tired.
I was mad all the time.
I basically didn't talk to my family.
The thing is, the marketing for Skinny Talk is so good.
It's really good.
It's also entirely wrong.
The thing that can be most grounding, truly grounding, is just coming back to your values.
Not your goals, not aesthetics, your core values.
What matters to you?
Who do you want to be?
How do you want to feel about yourself?
How do you want to experience your finite time on this planet?
If your values are peace presence connection joy ease, ask yourself does this content or behavior align with who I want to be?
Does body checking align with peace?
No.
Does skipping dinner align with connection?
No.
Does obsessing over whether my stomach looks flat align with joy?
No.
And then this is where something called opposite action becomes really helpful.
And it is exactly what it says on the tin.
Like if your mind tells you that you should check your body again.
The opposite action may be to just stay exactly where you are, to breathe, to sit through the urge, to feel the discomfort rise, peak and fall.
This is actually called urge surfing.
It's the practice of learning that feelings pass.
They don't necessarily need to be acted on.
Most urges last 30 to 40 minutes.
At most, they always come down.
Your job is not to stop the wave.
It's just to like to surf it.
Just to casually let yourself exist and live through it.
Part of life and to get like just philosophical with you probably not philosophical, just to get like Instagram poetry with you like part of life is to experience the joys of delicious food and yummy pastries and days where you just do nothing and getting takeout at 2am because you've been yapping to your friends all night.
Food is a source of enjoyment and joy, not discipline and punishment.
Normal eating is being able to enjoy all kinds of food in moderation, without feeling like you're in some kind of calorie debt, or you aren't disciplined enough, or this says something about your human character.
It doesn't.
It just says that you're having fun and that you're enjoying the fact that food is a great joy, and being able to move your body in ways that you want is also a great joy.
And not thinking about your body so obsessively that it becomes the epicenter of your world is also a great privilege and a great joy.
I want to repeat one thing that I said earlier, just one more time to finish up this episode.
Skinny Talk is incredibly marvelous at marketing a kind of lifestyle that is actually probably deeply miserable and deeply unattainable.
It's shocking.
It's novel.
It feeds into all these very primal, archaic teen ideas of body image and how we should look and that we would be happier if we looked like this.
It's also just entirely not true.
So don't let yourself and your life be dominated by a trend that you see online.
You have one precious, amazing, beautiful life.
I just don't think that our bodies or food is that important to be the only thing we care about.
So with that in mind, we are going to wrap up this episode.
If you made it this far, I want you to leave an emoji of your favorite food. below.
Mine's definitely watermelon.
So drop yours below, just so I know that you're a loyal listener and that you've made it this far in the episode.
I hope that it was thought provoking.
I hope that, even if you didn't agree with everything I said that you know, at least it got you to think more about the intersections between psychology body, social media, gender trends, politics.
It's all just kind of like a big interconnected web when you really zone out and look at it.
I want to thank again Libby Colbert and Erin Somerville for their contributions to this episode and their fantastic discussions and research.
Make sure that you give us a five-star review, especially if you are listening on Apple Podcasts.
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You can also follow us on Instagram at That Psychology Podcast if you want to learn, see some episode summaries, if you want to know what future episodes are coming out, or just be part of the community.
We would love to see you over there, but until next time, stay safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself, get offline every once in a while and we will talk very, very soon.
Johnny Knoxville here.
Check out Crimeless Hillbilly Heist, my new true crime podcast from smartless media, campsite media and big money players.
It's the true story of the almost perfect crime and the nimrods who almost pulled it off.
It was kind of like the perfect storm in a sewer.
That was dumb.
Do not follow my example.
Listen to Crimeless Hillbilly Heist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Chicago, a white woman's murder, a black man behind bars for a crime he didn't commit.
90 years of killing somebody I have never seen.
The Crying Wolf Podcast is the story of a corrupt detective, two men bound by injustice and the quest for redemption, no matter the price.
Listen to The Crying Wolf Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
I live below a cult leader, and I fear I've angered her.
Wait a minute, Sophia.
How do you know she's a cult leader?
Well Dakota, luckily it's.
I'm Not Afraid of a Scary Story Week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon.
This person writes My neighbor has been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals and now my ceiling is collapsing.
I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder.
I think they might be part of a cult.
Hold up!
A real-life cult?
And what is a dirt ritual?
No clue.
Hey, I'm Cal Penn and on my new podcast, Here We Go Again.
We'll take today's trends and headlines and ask why does history keep repeating itself?
Each week, I'm calling up my friends like Bill Nye, Lilly Singh, and Pete Buttigieg to talk about everything from the space race to movie remakes to psychedelics.
Put another way, are you high?
Are you high?
Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now, but my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future.
Listen and subscribe to.
Here We Go Again with Cal Penn on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
This is an iHeart Podcast.
