The discourse around the phrase ‘freshman 15’ promotes negative ideas about weight gain and harms college students’ physical and mental health. Photo courtesy of Flickr.
Graphic by Natasha Nagarajan ‘26.
By Hailey Balinbin ’26
Staff Writer
Content warning: This article mentions fatphobia and disordered eating.
This summer, before I began my freshman year of college, I found myself bombarded by college-related content from peers and social media influencers alike. Their advice ranged from classes, making friends, dorm setup, organization, grades and discourse on the “freshman 15” — which refers to the additional weight some students gain during their first year of college.
I encountered a lot of freshman 15 posts on TikTok, where some college students shared their personal experiences and debated whether or not the concept was real. In a video, TikTok user @col2swag stated that there is no way that the freshman 15 could be real since “dining hall food sucks [and] off-campus food is expensive.” Another user, @sh31bs, stated that they get six meals per week with their meal plan and skip breakfast to avoid being late. Several TikToks like these circulated this summer, gathering 10,000 to 100,000 likes and views per video.
These TikToks about the freshman 15 show a lack of understanding on topics related to weight gain. The dismissive use of this phrase bolsters and normalizes harmful language surrounding body image, weight gain, eating habits and appearance.
I was shocked to be getting so many videos of students talking about the freshman 15 — a phrase that I thought was outdated. I was under the impression that we’d moved past harmful terms regarding body image and diet culture since the term was first printed in an 1989 issue of Seventeen Magazine. However, having now moved into college, I noticed that the problem was not exclusive to TikTok. The term is still used extensively on college campuses where students use it both as a joke and misguided caution against weight gain.
Elsie Howland ’26 spoke about her experience in hearing the phrase both on social media and before starting college. Howland said, “I think it’s a light-hearted … thing to joke about, but I also feel like … it’s weirdly normalized … how people talk about their food [in] unhealthy ways.” Howland directs us to think about the harms of joking about terms relating to weight gain and body image. “I think [joking about the ‘freshman 15’] normalizes … weight-watching,” Howland stated.
“I think it’s a light-hearted … thing to joke about, but I also feel like … it’s weirdly normalized … how people talk about their food [in] unhealthy ways.”
The idea of the freshman 15 may be true in the sense that it is common for incoming college students to gain weight during their first year, but weight fluctuation is not standardized and every body functions differently. A 2004 study by Cornell University found that “freshmen gained an average of 4.2 pounds during the first 12 weeks of school,” WebMD reported.
Similarly, an article from The Atlantic explained that it is natural to gain weight in certain stages in life, especially during the onset of adulthood. A Reuters study cited by The Atlantic showed that college freshmen gained half a pound more than people their age who don’t attend college, highlighting the impact of the transition from adolescence to college on initiating bodily changes.
As cited in a Thrillist article on the phenomenon, a study conducted in 2008 by the American College Health Association found that “of the participants monitored, only half gained any amount of weight, suggesting that the freshman 15 isn’t a trend at all, but rather a case-by-case consideration.” While it is true that weight can fluctuate during college, creating and popularizing a single, negatively-connotated term for this phenomenon is dangerous. This can be insensitive toward many people, including those who have difficult experiences with food, through perpetuating the idea that gaining weight is bad.
Complementing the frequent usage of the term freshman 15 is the media-propagated ideal of thinness. In the United States, it’s easy to be engulfed by societal values that idolize thinness. For instance, these values are easily seen in the fashion industry’s promotion of conventionally-thin runway models and harmful diets that promote unrealistic body standards.
When looking at any clothing site — especially those marketed toward younger women — there are consistently more thin models represented and a small range of sizes represented. One example of this phenomenon is Brandy Melville, a popular clothing brand which “offers one size fits most” clothing that grossly ignores diverse body sizes, PopSugar reported.
The fashion beauty industry’s favor of thinness perpetuates America’s scornful attitude towards weight gain. Here, Brandy Melville’s “one size fits most” policy reinforces the fact that any deviation from a thin body type, as portrayed by the clothing website and media as a whole, is seen as inherently bad because a body with more weight is not marketed within the industry as desirable. It is because of this dangerous link between industry-perceived social desirability and an unrealistic universal body type that we see the freshman 15 implying that what number you get on your scale determines your value.
Tanisha Liang ’26 has also considered the phrase. “You don’t really hear people [saying], ‘Don’t eat too much because then you’re gonna [gain] the freshman 15. [This is a] good part about being [at] a small liberal arts college, but it also comes from your family. Trying to destigmatize weight gain and college, in your nuclear family and everyone around you is important.’” Liang said.
Liang’s experience shows how the term has crept into collegiate discourse beyond the college campus. The extent of this usage points to an increasing need to minimize such language. The more the term gets thrown around — jokingly or not — the more it perpetuates the idea that weight gain is inherently bad and needs to be avoided.
Sophie Latham ’26 stated, “If [college is] the first access you have to genuine meals, … it can be so harmful to shame [first-year students] for eating.” When a term that demonizes weight gain is constantly thrown around it can feel hard to escape the pressure to obsessively keep track of weight.
The inclusion of terms such as freshman 15 in our conversations regarding first-year undergraduate student experiences is incredibly dangerous. It promotes an excessive focus on body image and shines a negative light on weight gain. Throwing around harmful terms related to weight, even as a joke, can be damaging to how young people think about their relationship with food. No one should ever feel bad about nourishing themselves, and gaining weight is not a bad thing. The culture around terms like freshman 15 lead us to think otherwise, and we must make efforts to minimize the integration of such terms into our vocabularies.