Does TikTok’s ‘chubby’ filter prove fatphobia is impossible to outrun?

'I feel disheartened'

Social media's 'chubby' filter is the latest piece of evidence that fatphobia still runs rampant in society. Laura Roscioli shares her thoughts on the toxic trend.

One night I was working in a fancy cocktail bar and a woman I was serving asked if I was pregnant. I wasn’t. 

I had my period that night and as someone who suffers from endometriosis, the bloat is real. Even still, I was wearing a loose-fitting dress and felt beautiful – until that moment. 

When I told her I wasn’t pregnant, she responded with a curt: “Well, you’d be prettier and skinnier if you didn’t drink.”

Her words punctured my gut. I felt ashamed and embarrassed. There was a part of me that believed her – that I would be prettier if I were skinnier. It wasn’t like she was the first one to ever take it upon herself to tell me that, but her blunt and confident delivery at my workplace caught me off-guard. 

I cried angry-tears in the staff bathroom because the other part of me was outraged. How dare she have the audacity to call out something I was already so aware of? 

Throughout my life, the conversation about my weight has almost always sat with other women. Whether it was a girl at high school calling me “thunder thighs”, a friend saying that she “doesn’t get as bloated” as me during her period and that she “wouldn’t know how to manage” it if she did, or various women congratulating me throughout life moments where I’ve looked thinner – usually due to stress, sadness or grief – I’ve always been highly conscious of other women’s awareness of my body weight. 

It’s like this silent dialogue that’s always present.  The undertone is that thinness is something to be proud of, something that defines success; the ideal. Whereas being bigger is something to be ashamed of, something to hide, something to grapple with. 

Whether we agree with that notion consciously or not, it’s an inherent belief that fiercely sits within the roots of our societal structure. 

And right now, uprooting this frankly fatphobic narrative feels a little helpless as its messaging continues to be at the forefront, this time as a viral TikTok filter trend: the ‘chubby’ filter. 

@mxndy_x

Nothing could of prepared me for that😭😭😭 #fyp #chubbyfilter #ai #fatfilter

♬ Anxiety - Doechii

This filter, garnering traction from millions of creators across TikTok in the past few days, sees users putting a ‘chubby’ AI-generated filter over themselves to see what they’d look like if they were a larger body size. 

Overall, the outtake is that they’re glad a larger body size isn’t their reality, headlining the filter with captions like “No thank you” or “Omg no”, accompanied by many emojis that indicate they’re sad, horrified or shocked at what they’d look like. 

The general tone is ridicule: like “imagine if I looked like this!!!” type vibe, with commenters popping up to support this with “Don’t worry babe, this is not your reality” or “Dw it’s not real life”. 

Thank god, right?

@jyoung101capcut

Chubby ai filter trend #chubbyai #chubbyfilter #capcut #capcutpioneer #pioneertemplate #aifilter

♬ original sound - capcut.trend.uk

On the flip side, there’s a filter with equal virality that AI generates a ‘skinny’ version of users. Almost all users of the ‘chubby’ lens are following the same template with this filter, captioning their videos with things like “Seeing how I’d look skinny for motivation”. 

Other videos show people with bigger body sizes trying on ‘skinny’ to motivate them to “keep going to the gym” or “get up in the morning”. 

Each of these filters keep popping up in my TikTok newsfeed, likely because when I first saw them I was too stunned to keep scrolling. I watched each transition in full, mouth ajar in horror and concern that this was something people are seriously engaging with online. And now, I can’t escape them. 

@okamana777

Please be respectful in the comments! Every body is perfect!! This Filter ist just for manifesting ✨ #skinny #filter #manifesting #ai #bodygoals

♬ Originalton - cool

Every time I log into TikTok I see a barrage of people either wanting to be thinner or hating the AI-generated larger version of themselves, and it’s an earth-shattering reminder that we still live in a world that categorically celebrates thinness over all other body types. 

Honestly, I feel exhausted. For the past few years, I’ve been super outspoken about my experience in various environments as a curvy woman. I’ve unpacked the need to hide my stretch marks and cellulite. I’ve spoken about the otherness I’ve felt as a plus-sized model, despite being ‘invited’ to walk on runways and appear in campaigns. 

I’ve explored the additional sexual exploitation I’ve experienced as a woman with curves – the objectification of my big boobs and a juicy butt has felt both flattering and problematic in almost equal measure – which is a problem within itself. 

I’ve even delved into the uncomfortability I’ve found within the shift in tone from friends, family and people I barely know when I lost a bunch of weight after a break-up and the loss of my Nonno. 

Image: Getty

Overall, it has felt really important to talk about the nuance of how society treats women – and everyone, TBH – based on weight. To me, it shouldn’t be a metric for our value. 

It’s a massive problem in many areas and industries – fashion, mental health and sexuality just to name a few – that we have an underlying definition of success that excludes people based on their physical appearance. 

Obviously it’s a bit more complicated than simply disagreeing with our rank in society to be measured by how we look, but I’ve always followed the philosophy that voicing complicated feelings is better than feeling beaten down by them.

Instead of simply walking out as “the biggest model” someone has “ever put in a bikini down a runway”, I’ve written about how it feels. 

I let the shame, the feeling of not fitting in, the relentless insecurities that seem to come from somewhere far beneath my consciousness – and I talk about it all out loud. 

I personally feel that putting language to the complex emotions that arise from a structure we feel we don’t have any control over (patriarchy) helps me, and hopefully others, heal. That by talking, we’re creating paths of change through conversation. 

Or at most, helping each other to talk about unknown feelings by providing the words and taking the first plunge. 

Victoria's Secret's first curve model, Jennifer Atilémile. Image: supplied

For a while, this approach seemed to be working. I was constantly hearing about size inclusion within the fashion industry; designer houses sending curve models down the runway, casting diverse-sized models in their campaigns and mainstream labels began increasing their size offerings. 

I began to see more and more women talking about their experiences online, as well as amplifying the voices of other women who felt discriminated against for their size and were suffering consequences within their mental health, careers, love life and friendships. 

Victoria’s Secret went down, Ashley Graham (and co) went up, and billboards on the main streets of my own city began to show more women with bodies like mine. It felt like real change was happening, or at least starting to. 

But cultural moments like TikTok’s ‘chubby’ filter hitting virality on a social media platform where the majority of users are between 18 and 24 years old, bring me back to the reality of what it means to live in a patriarchal society, especially as women. 

Because the truth is, despite our best efforts to derail the narrative that being ‘chubby’ is bad — the majority of us still believe it. 

Metrics like BMI don't take into account the female body’s natural fluctuation due to hormonal changes and imbalance. Image: iStock

In the early modern era (17th-19th Century), thinness became linked to whiteness and self-control, while fatness was often associated with non-white, “primitive” cultures. Then, in the early 20th Century came the rise of eugenics, which classified fatness as a “degenerative” trait. Eugenicists linked body size to moral failings and criminality, further stigmatising fatness. .

Obviously, this continued to snowball into the 1990s, when the World Health Organization (WHO) adopted the Body Mass Index (BMI) as a standard measure for health, despite its limitations. The classification of BMI thresholds further entrenched fatphobia.

We all remember doing the beep test in school, right? Or having our BMI tested in a PE class? These structures that enforce a particular weight and size as the ideal have been further supported by education and medicine; making them almost impossible to outrun. And although there is some scientific merit in the use of these measures for health reasons, they don’t really apply to everyone. 

They certainly don’t take into account the female body’s natural fluctuation due to hormonal changes and imbalances, mental health struggles and just simply keeping us alive. There’s not enough research into the female body for that level of understanding (yet). 

Basically, we live in a world that has decided that to be thin is to be successful. This applies especially to women, whose reputation so often relies on their physical appearances thanks to patriarchal ideals. It’s disheartening to know that young women are growing up with that same messaging, that there’s still this inherent belief that to be ‘chubby’ is undesirable and that to be ‘thin’ is motivating. 

But I implore us to keep pushing against it. I know it can feel tiring – I’ve struggled to push through my own mental exhaustion to write this article – but by constantly addressing the way that the content we’re consuming impacts how we feel about our bodies, we’re able to draw attention to the problematic nature of outdated ideals. 

We’re able to nip these toxic trends in the bud, hopefully. 

Our voices may sometimes feel like an echo chamber that never goes quite deep enough to cause systemic change, but one thing’s for sure: they’re much more valuable when they are spoken and not silenced. 

Originally published as Does TikTok’s ‘chubby’ filter prove fatphobia is impossible to outrun?