A recent graduate of the University of Cambridge, Iona Collins has amassed a following of over 239,000 followers on TikTok. With her ongoing “recontextualizing food” series, she chooses food items that diet culture has deemed “bad” or “unclean” and reminds us of their value
It was an honor to speak with her on experience fighting for her own recovery, and the role social media has played in her journey.
You have close to 200,000 followers now on TikTok. How does that feel?
It’s really weird. I did not expect that.
Your first post was in March. Was it a quarantine project for you?
Yeah, to be honest I literally was just doing it for fun back then. I mean, I still am doing it for fun, but I was just making little things because I was enjoying making little things, just ‘cause I was bored in quarantine, and now it’s become something I actually do, kind of as a job. So, it’s weird.
I’ve noticed you get a lot of really positive comments on your videos and I’m sure some negative ones as well but does it help you to feel that you’re actually reaching and helping people with your videos?
Yeah, definitely, I get a lot of positive comments but also it’s interesting because a lot of the comments are coming from kids, like teenagers, and I think when I was that age I think I really would have wanted something like that, or that’s something that could have really helped. But it’s quite nice seeing that from people who you’re maybe helping to realize something much earlier than I did.
Totally, I think that with the younger generations, like teenagers on TikTok, I’ll occasionally come across some pretty toxic stuff on the app, it’ll be like what-I-eat-in-a-day, 1200 calories or whatever, and I feel like that’s the kind of stuff that like we were exposed to on Tumblr at that age. So it seems that kind of content is having some kind of comeback on Tiktok, but I wonder if you feel that is what’s dominating or do you think there are a lot of pages like your own really counteracting that?
I think I definitely get the sort of early 2013/2014 Tumblr vibes from it sometimes, but I think the fact that the algorithm and for you page gets so personalized based on what you view, I feel like I don’t see as much of that diet stuff. But I do hear that other people are seeing a lot of that stuff, so I think it’s difficult because it will definitely dominate for some people, and particularly people who are insecure and who are looking at that kind of thing more because they’re going to want more of it. I think one of the good and bad things about the algorithm is that people kind of end up in a bubble, which can be a bit dangerous if that’s where you end up. I know that those kind of pro-ana communities on twitter, like, they’re very insular and don’t want anyone to even know they exist, really, in part because they’re worried about exposing vulnerable people and essentially catalyzing their eating disorder.
You spoke a bit on your TikTok about the barriers to mental health resources and eating disorder treatment that you faced, so you can go into as much detail as you’d like but would you mind just sharing what that was like?
Yeah, I think I’ve dealt with mental health issues since I was out of secondary school, so it wasn’t really anything new to me and I always had a kind of outlet that I would use, whether it was Tumbr or a private instagram or something, but one thing I definitely noticed was that when it came to disordered eating in general, the conversation was always very white and very straight and very sort of restricted in what it looked like. Weirdly, even pro-ana communities are also very white, straight, female. So even when that was something I was looking at, I felt excluded, which was very weird. So I thought that if I talked about it or even just put myself out there as somebody who was recovering from an eating disorder, I thought that maybe somebody else who was a person of color or who was queer or something might see that and be like oh okay, it’s not as weird for me to be experiencing this. It’s honestly been really, really helpful because it’s given me a chance to challenge myself in ways that I wouldn’t have challenged myself otherwise, which is helpful for my recovery but has also like allowed me to learn more about myself, more about how other people deal with things and more about how I sort of can curate a recovery for myself that isn’t necessarily what you see everywhere else.
I mean, having been through this stuff as well as a teenager, I feel like there are so many people who find it so hard to just take the first step of simply asking for help. And I would just imagine that it’s so demoralizing to take that step just to be met with more doors in your face, and not getting what you need to get better.
Yeah, I think that’s one of the toughest things about the NHS generally and the lack of understanding around eating disorders, is that there is so much bias, to the point where even if you do reach out, it can still be very, very difficult to get the help that you need. You’ll often just get turned away, or you’ll be put on a waiting list. So I was like, if I’m going to keep getting put on waiting lists, I’m just going to have to do something for myself ‘cause it’s just not affordable for everyone, it’s not accessible for everyone, so I guess my whole thing was, like, I want to make it more accessible and I want people to know that if they are struggling, and they can’t get treatment, it’s okay. Obviously you want to try and get into treatment but there are so many barriers, it’s just not always possible.
Right, and I would imagine that at least sometimes, when people are turned away, they would turn to the internet as an alternative, and I think if you have nowhere else to go those pro-ana online communities can be really appealing, because at least you’re able to find community, even if you’re struggling. But hopefully when people turn to the internet for help they can find something more like your page.
I hope that, and like I think because when I got turned away, one of the first things I did when was say well, I’m going to have to do this on my own, googling meal plans and finding there were tons of youtubers who were dealing with eating disorder recovery and I found that that really helped me. So I thought that if it was helping me, it’s likely that it would be helping other people and I found other people on TikTok doing similar things and I was like, well, clearly somebody wants to hear about it.
Are there other creators on TikTok or other platforms that you really admire in particular?
Yeah, the person that I started watching when I started recovery, her name was Rebecca Lung, she’s on youtube and also on TikTok, there’s Brittany Lancaster, who else, all the names have gone out but anyway, they generally make more like body positive specific stuff but they will also talk about eating disorders which I think is really helpful in terms of representation. The only thing that does bother me is that there isn’t very much diversity in terms of ethnicity or disability or anything like that, so it’s like if there isn’t a creator on the platform doing that then I can’t point to them or find them.
you can follow Iona on Tiktok @thisisiona
and on instagram @thisisiona_