(Mentioned in title, but if you currently or have previously suffered from any type of eating disorder, please don’t read this article. For your own safety. Much love.)

19 year old Addison Rae Easterling, a popular figure on tiktok and social media influencer, made a video the other day where she danced to the song “Prom Queen” by Beach Bunny. She has since taken the video off the platform, but here’s the tiktok in a youtube video. If you haven’t yet seen it, take a second to watch it.

Select lyrics:

“Shut up, count your calories
I never looked good in mom jeans
Wish I, was like you, blue-eyed blondie, perfect body
Maybe I should try harder”

It’s pretty evident through the even the first lyrics that “Prom Queen” by Beach Bunny is a song about insecurities. It’s a song about having an eating disorder, a song about being unhealthy, about comparing yourself to other people. It’s a song about not loving yourself.

And for Addison to dance to it, happily, it triggered a lot of people who have previously or currently suffered from an eating disorder. Quotes from other videos on tiktok in reply are:

“me having a binge episode after days of starving myself … vs Addison Rae throwing it back to a song we all cried to”

“me listening to this song while crying on the floor because I ate 1100 calories in a day… vs Addison Rae promoting overpriced jeans”

(I’ll get to the jeans bit later).

Addison should’ve known, making this tiktok, that this song was about a sensitive topic. It’s so clear from the lyrics. What else could it be about? As an influencer, putting this on her platform could cause a lot of young girls to feel even more insecure than they already do. In essence, she should’ve known better than to put this on her platform.

Addison has since taken down the video. That’s a step. But what bugs me is that there has been no formal apology from her. She hasn’t even made one of those cheesy influencer apology videos, where you know they don’t mean it. Nothing. Addison is a big promoter of body positivity, which leads me to wonder – why can’t she apologize for this? Even acknowledge that putting that video up was harmful?

At least we know she’ll be more careful next time.

Now, here’s the thing. While that video was harmful, and while Addison never should have posted it, it also was an ad.

In the video, Addison was promoting the AExME prom, hosted by American Eagle. In short, the video was an ad. Meaning Addison probably didn’t pick the song, or what she wore, or really anything about it. Meaning the video wasn’t orchestrated by her, but by someone else. Meaning that the song, maybe wasn’t her choice.

This doesn’t excuse what happened. But it does lessen the blame on Addison, and gives us more insight into society’s treatment and general ignorance of eating disorders.

Addison shouldn’t be totally cancelled for putting this video up – but she needs to have a think about what she did, and how she’s going to think about her content in the future. In the meantime, we’re still waiting for that apology. After all, isn’t Addison a huge proponent of body positivity?