Last year, Emma, a 37-year-old teacher, broke up with her boyfriend. He had often taunted her for her weight, leaving snarky Post-it notes on her clothes and telling her she needed to eat better. “He told me I was so fat that no one else would ever love me,” she said. After they broke up, his words still haunted Emma (who asked to use a pseudonym for privacy). She spent a lot of time scrolling through #SkinnyTok, a growing community of weight-loss influencers, where she found Liv Schmidt.
A 23-year-old model in New York City, Schmidt encourages her followers to “live the Skinni Girl lifestyle” by following her weight-loss advice. When Emma stumbled on her TikTok, Schmidt had more than 600,000 followers. She was shocked by some of the things Schmidt said — in one video, she mocks women who wear sundresses to hide their “puffy face and bloated bodies,” and she once reposted a TikTok with the caption “girls be 300 pounds saying ‘I’m a snack.’ No megatron you’re the fkn vending machine.” Emma was intrigued. “I just figured, Okay, if she was able to get that thin, she could help me lose that last 15 pounds,” she told me. Emma signed up for the Skinni Société, Schmidt’s subscription-only Instagram group. For $20 a month, members gain access to exclusive content on Schmidt’s Instagram page, including recipes, workout videos, and diaries of everything she eats in a day. They’re also added to a group DM thread on the platform, where they share their weight-loss goals and progress. When Emma joined, she saw members posting their step counts, meal plans, and before-and-after photos. She couldn’t help but notice many were quite young; some appeared to be in college or high school, posting about graduation or sharing prom pics. “I felt like I was old enough to be their mother,” she said.
During her time in the Skinni Société, Emma’s life became dominated by a single obsession: food — and how to avoid eating it. She frequently felt weak and exhausted. At one point, she said, she had been on the treadmill at the gym for a minute when she had to get off; she was lightheaded and drenched in sweat. Every time she opened the app, she saw a new video or message from Schmidt urging her followers to “eat clean, feel light” or to chug water or green tea to trick their bodies into ignoring hunger cues. Her subscribers couldn’t get enough. “They’re all so obsessive, so it’s hard to not become obsessive too,” Emma said. “It’s, like, this little cult of being skinny.”
In interviews, Schmidt — who didn’t respond to requests for comment — has claimed she merely offers common-sense weight-loss advice. The goal of the Skinni Société, she says, is to hold members accountable and support their goals. But where is the line between embracing diet culture and promoting eating disorders? Inside the group, members post ridiculously high step counts and commiserate over the side effects of their low-calorie diets, like hair loss and dizziness. Though the group is technically closed to those under 18, when I joined I found more than a dozen members who are high-school students, one of whom is a freshman.
Last fall, Schmidt was kicked off TikTok after The Wall Street Journal asked the platform for comment on a story about her. Her fans rallied to her defense, and she made the ban part of her brand, arguing that she’s the victim of censorship. In April, the conservative women’s magazine Evie featured her in a glowing profile with the headline “Banned for Being Honest?” Now she’s more popular than ever and has quadrupled her follower count on Instagram. Air Mail recently estimated that Schmidt makes $130,000 a month from the 6,500 members in the Skinni Société. She takes the influencer playbook a step further, directly profiting from a little club of followers who encourage one another to eat, drink, and live just like Liv Schmidt. In March, she reposted a message from a follower who wrote a school paper about how much she looks up to Schmidt. “Her content has helped and continues to help so many young girls form a healthy relationship with food and exercise,” this fan wrote. “She truly exemplifies the values of what a role model should be.”