TikTok slammed for 'fatphobic' filter trend that encourages 'body shaming'

TikTok has come under fire over a "fatphobic" filter that bloated out people's faces and added wrinkles, with users removing the filter at the end to show the difference.

While the platform has since deleted the filter, it appeared on lots of videos due to a popular trend back in June.

It involved using the filter named "double chin" as the song 1, 2, 3 by Sofia Reyes featuring Jason Derulo and De La Ghetto played and while users had the filter on as Reyes sang: "Parece que hoy me gustas un poco más," which roughly means "It seems that today I like you a little more."

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Then, the filter suddenly disappears from the user's face as they lip sync Reyes's lyrics: "Hola, comment allez, allez-vous," which means "hello, how are you?" in English.

Soon enough, the popular TikToker such as Katiana Kay were participating in the trend, with her video receiving over 6m views, 450,000 likes, as well as thousands of comments.

Another TikToker @sitianggunn who has over 10.3m followers, also participated in the trend which saw her video receive 11.5m views, 805,000 likes and thousands of comments.

One of the videos from the trend that perhaps received the most views came from TikToker @eunicetjoaa who did a close-up clip of the before and after using the filter which has garnered a whopping 29.8m views, 2.3m likes, and over 8,700 comments.

But the trend has received backlash from people who have created TikToks on the matter in order to call out the "fatphobia."

An example is user @deadnerdpool who duetted Katiana Kay's video and said: "First: this filter is super f@tphobic.

"Second: as a creator with a large following, you'd think you'd wanna post something positive for young girls to see," she added.

TikToker Marie (@justbearock) gave a sarcastic response to the trend as she pretended to be shocked in a clip where she wrote: "thank god none of you actually have a double chin!!!!

"I can now sleep happy knowing you have a jawline!!! I was scared you were actually fat!!!"

She added in the caption: "How are you all so openly fatphobic"

Her clip received 1.5m views, 248,000 likes and over a thousand comments who agreed.

One person wrote: "The best feeling for me is finding a callout post for a toxic trend before I even find the toxic trend. Makes me feel like I’m doing something right."

"Literally why do they always equate jawlines to being pretty," another person said.

Someone else replied: "I know I’m on the right side of TikTok when I see the videos bashing the trend before I see the trend."

While TikToker Bubbles (@bubblesworlddd) similarly slammed the people who took part in the trend.

"I love this trend it's such a confidence boost bc [because] you go from having to see yourself with a larger f@t face & then you take off the filter & feel relieved you don't actually look like that," the on-screen text read as Bubbles look at the camera.

The video has 969,000 views, 137,000 likes, as people in the comments also criticised people posting with the filter.

One person said: "and literally they see NOTHING wrong with it??? like goodbye"

"How are people not seeing that this trend is people saying fat=ugly while trying to show they are conventionally attractive?? like what??" another person wrote.

Someone else added: "They act like this trend is normal. It’s not. It’s humiliating and a form of body shaming at this point."

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