Every day in 2025 brings with it a slew of fresh horrors. Among them is a new and breathtakingly stupid TikTok trend, in which — wait for it — conventionally hot girls use an AI filter to make themselves look bigger.
The trend is as follows: Over a slowed-down version of Doechii’s “Anxiety,” someone uses an AI filter — charmingly dubbed the “Chubby” filter on the video editing app CapCut — to make themselves look larger. That’s it. That’s the joke. Look, this normally skinny person is using a filter to make themselves look fat! Get these ladies a seat at the Algonquin Round Table.
The trend isn’t currently hugely popular on TikTok: The most popular hashtag associated with it on the platform only has a few thousand videos. But it gained attention on the wider internet when writer Rebecca Shaw posted one of the TikToks using the filter on X. “It’s sooooooo funny and we definitely aren’t spiralling back down to pro ana death to fats era that damages every young woman,” she wrote in her post.
This isn’t anything new — it’s basically another version of that trend from a few years ago when people were Photoshopping celebrities like Kylie Jenner to make their bodies look bigger. That meme in itself was a variation on a 2015 project by Spanish artist David Lopera, who similarly used Photoshop on photos of women like Mila Kunis and Jennifer Lawrence to make them appear larger. But while Lopera’s project ostensibly had a higher-minded goal — to show how photo-editing software exacerbates the pressure on women to be dangerously thin — the “Chubby” filter on TikTok shares no such objective.
The trend arrives amid a seeming resurgence of early aughts-era body-image standards as images of celebrities like Nicole Richie, Paris Hilton, and the Olsen twins recirculate as “thin inspiration” on social media. There’s also been a reemergence of pro-ana content on low-moderation platforms like X, where images of emaciated female influencers and celebrities, as well as posts cataloguing dangerous weight-loss tips and memes, rack up millions of views.
TikTok, too, has played a large role in promoting harmful disordered-eating content. The platform technically prohibits users from posting explicitly pro-ana videos, with its community guidelines stating it does “not allow showing or promoting disordered eating and dangerous weight loss behaviors, or facilitating the trade or marketing of weight loss or muscle gain products.” TikTok also restricts users under 18 from viewing or posting content that promotes weight-loss products or diet trends. But these guidelines leave ample room for gray areas (as evidenced, arguably, by the existence of this trend, which does not appear to violate any of TikTok’s existing policies regarding eating-disorder content).
Despite the safeguards TikTok has put in place to protect young users from disordered-eating content, researchers have found that the platform still promotes harmful ideas around body image. One 2024 study of women aged 18 to 28, for instance, found that viewing pro-ana content on the platform “had immediate negative consequences for body image,” even when the women were exposed to such videos for less than ten minutes. The hyperspecific TikTok For You Page algorithm, which recommends videos based on content users have previously engaged with, contributes to this cycle: People who are more likely to engage with pro-ED content — including those who may be predisposed to eating disorders — are potentially served more and more of it.
Many TikTok users have rightfully criticized those who have posted videos using the filter. “This trend outing all the mean girls,” reads a top comment on one such clip. Still, the fact that the filter has gained some traction indicates that fatphobia, like virtually every other hateful and regressive value in 2025, may be coming back with a vengeance.
In the U.S., the National Alliance for Eating Disorders Helpline can be reached at 866-662-1235.
