I opened TikTok this week and was in absolute shock.
I’m used to seeing different trends going viral, but all I saw as I scrolled was video after video of users applying a ‘chubby filter’ to their pictures filled my feed.
Unfortunately, it is exactly as it sounds – and it brought back painful memories.
Users upload their photos, and the filter uses AI to show them what they would look like if they were fat. Those who have used it often accompany their post with a comment about how funny they found the images.
It’s clear that many TikTok users view being in a bigger body as some kind of punchline.
This, sadly, is nothing new. But that doesn’t make it ok.
Many of us grew up on negative media representations of fat people, where fat people were mostly depicted as the butt of the joke.
I know I did. When I was younger and going through disordered eating, screens were filled with comedic depictions of fatness – with films like Shallow Hal, The Nutty Professor, and Friends, which had a story arc about a character’s previously overweight self – ‘Fat Monica’.
In each of these examples, snipes about the fat character’s body size were either accompanied by laugh tracks, or met with raucous laughter in the cinema.
This instilled one message in me as a teenager – being fat was something to jeer at, and that at all costs I had to avoid being fat so that I didn’t experience what Fat Monica did.
At one point, someone referenced Monica’s old weight, and I realised it was exactly the same as mine.
It felt like the media had taught me that my body, because it was not thin, was meant to be laughed at.
This was reinforced by my first romantic experience. When I was sixteen, I had my first kiss in the woods with someone I trusted and thought I loved.
But I found out later that he hadn’t chosen the cover of trees to be romantic, but that, but because he didn’t want to be seen with someone who looked like me.
He was worried about being mocked by his peers for kissing someone who he thought was fat, and didn’t fit into the body type that the media had taught him was desirable.
And 16-year-old me, while hurt, didn’t even think to question his reasoning, because society and culture seemed to reinforce that he was right.
As the years went on, and as I worked to recover from disordered eating, countless depictions of fatness told me the same.
That the body I had worked so hard to love, despite all the societal messaging telling me I should hate my body, was still a joke.
This ‘fat filter’ trend is a new iteration of this same derision.
Instead of characters on screens, and actors using fat suits or CGI, people are taking that same fatphobic rhetoric into their own hands by applying a filter to their own photos.
And when, alongside it, they post nasty comments about the larger image of themselves that the AI creates, they show that they think being fat is inherently funny and something to be ridiculed – it invites others to laugh with them.
It doesn’t give them any insight into what it means to be fat in 2025, because it’s all fake. All another big joke.
When the media, whether it’s TV or TikTok, makes fun of bigger body sizes, this has a malignant effect on how we perceive fat people, and also how fat people are treated.
A study from The Lancet – a peer-reviewed general medical journal – found that negative portrayals of fat people in media not only made peoples’ views of fat peoples worse, but also risked encouraging stigmatising behaviours (for example, bullying, abuse and discrimination) towards fat people.
This is why trends like the Fat Filter trend are so harmful – it encourages and normalises the idea that fat people deserve this kind of nasty treatment, and in doing so, perpetuates fatphobic behaviour.
This goes beyond social media, and has real world consequences. This kind of trend affects how fat people are treated, and will also have a hugely negative knock on effect for peoples’ body image.
And when you consider that young people spend an average of five hours and 24 minutes engaged in social media activity, that means teenagers are at greater risk of seeing more of this body negative content.
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So no, this isn’t just some silly little trend, or something to be dismissed. It can truly harm people.
What gives me faith in humanity is that in some of the comments in the videos, people were fighting back, saying how people using the filter were exposing themselves as ‘mean girls’. It’s a glimmer of hope that we are not taking these nasty jokes lying down, even if this filter has gained a great deal of traction.
No matter what a trend is telling you, fat bodies are not for peoples’ amusement. They are deserving of love, care and enjoyment.
And no filter should change that.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk.
Share your views in the comments below.
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