A video of a woman explaining why she refused to give her 7-year-old niece the breakfast she wanted has gone viral on TikTok. But there’s a twist.
Rihanna Teixeira, 38, shared a story about a conversation about food she had with the niece ahead of a child’s party. She told her she could only have one slice of pizza and cake, but when they were there, she allowed ice cream too.
However, there was a consequence to that consumption: The next day, the niece had to choose between fruit or vegetables for breakfast, even though she wanted eggs. “We gotta balance out what you had yesterday,” Teixeira told the crying child. “You had too many carbs. You had too much sugar.”
Then, Teixeira, who lives in Boca Raton, Florida, reveals that the entire situation was fabricated.
Rihanna Teixeira uses her TikTok platform to promote body acceptance and help other people “heal their relationship with food.”
Rihanna Teixeira uses her TikTok platform to promote body acceptance and help other people “heal their relationship with food.”
TikTok/@thediaryofrihanna
The discussion about body shaming left the audience with much food for thought, she told Newsweek. “A lot of people who struggle with food would never speak to a child about their body the way they speak to themselves.”
During the video, she says: “This whole story is completely made up,” followed by: “That would be considered as child abuse, which I would agree.”
She then asks: “If it’s abuse to her, why is it not abuse to you?”
She then explains that many people punish themselves for eating something they said they wouldn’t, starving themselves the following day.
“I don’t have my own children, but I am very close with my nieces. They were a big motivation for me to want to recover because I didn’t want them to see my behaviors around food and my body,” she told Newsweek. “I used my niece as an example because people tend to have a soft spot for children.
“A key part of my recovery was learning to treat my inner child the way I would treat one of my nieces, which includes a lot of compassion and grace.”
Teixeira, a marketing associate, opened up to Newsweek about her battle with eating disorders and body image.
“I struggled with eating disorders since I was a young girl. I put myself on my first ‘diet’ when I was 8,” she said. “The diet was just skipping breakfast and lunch, and that eventually turned into anorexia. In high school, it turned into bulimia, which I struggled with off and on until I was in my early 30s.”
In 2022, the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health asked a national sample of 1,653 parents of children 8 to 18 about issues related to their child’s perceptions about appearance.
Approximately two-thirds of the parents reported that their child felt self-conscious about some aspect of appearance. This insecurity affected both boys and girls, with 73 percent of teen girls and 69 percent of teen boys experiencing body image issues.
The study highlighted several common causes of body dissatisfaction among children, including concerns about weight, skin conditions like acne, hair and height.
Now, six years into her eating disorder recovery, Teixeira uses her TikTok platform, @thediaryofrihanna, to promote body acceptance and help other people.
She told Newsweek: “I can now see how badly people treat themselves when it comes to food and their body. I am passionate about helping people heal their relationship with food and their body, and sometimes it takes seeing your behavior from a different perspective.
“Oftentimes, we would never treat others the way we treat ourselves.”
TikTokers React
So far, the video, which has the caption “If you wouldn’t do it to her, don’t do it to yourself,” has received over 118,000 views.
“When I realized where this was going man, my heart broke. Thank you for this perspective,” said one user.
Another wrote: “Girl I was about to go off on you! But man is this the truth.”
“I’m crying… I needed this more than you’ll ever know,” said a third user.
A fourth said: “Oh geez. I didn’t like you for a minute…It’s a good message.”
If you or someone else needs help with an eating disorder, contact your doctor or the National Eating Disorder Association hotline at (800)-931-2237.
Is there a health problem that’s worrying you? Let us know via health@newsweek.com. We can ask experts for advice, and your story could be featured in Newsweek.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
