TikTok’s “What I Eat In A Day”: Controlling the Female Body Through Media

The following essay centers around the TikTok #WhatIEatInADay trend. It is a historical and cultural analysis of the ways that the trend perpetuates diet culture messages from past mediums while introducing new trends that are unique to the digital age. The scope of research is American mass media targeting women from the early twentieth century to the present-day. Etiquette books, newspaper articles, advertisements, and magazines were used for the historical portion of the essay. TikTok was used to gather trend analytics and to provide details about user engagement. The purpose of the research is to expose the ways that diet culture messages in mass media have evolved over the past century, influencing the way that women engage with the content.