Skinny Is Not an Act of Rebellion
But Liv Schmidt and the new pro-ana conservatives want you to believe otherwise.
Liv Schmidt is a 23-year-old weight loss influencer/girl about town. Literally about town; most of Schmidt’s Instagram content is photos of her posing in random spots around New York City, or walking obsessively around New York City or both.
When she’s not peripatetically posing or stopping in at Chanel to pick up bronzer, Schmidt runs The Skinni Société, a subscription-only Instagram group where she dispenses weight loss advice, moderates conversations, and shares her food diaries and workout routines. AirMail estimates that Schmidt has made as much as $130,000 per month off her members. In April, she was heralded as a hero by conservative lady mag Evie for “making skinny go viral.”
Two weeks ago, The Cut ran a piece containing interviews with former Skinni Société members which confirmed what I could tell simply from perusing Schmidt’s free content: Liv Schmidt pushes the women in her membership to cut calories and increase workouts to dizzying levels. The members themselves normalize warning signs like hair loss and irregular periods with tips like “eat like a skinni person: Focused. Feminine. In control,” Schmidt makes Andy Elliott look soft. And many of her disciples are teenagers.
The Skinni Société is an eating disorder fight club. And just like we can draw a line from content creators like Andrew Huberman and Joe Rogan to incels and MAGA bros, influencers like Schmidt sell dieting as a way for women to reject feminism.