Body image is people’s subjective perception of their bodies, regardless of their actual appearance. Body image is a complicated aspect that encompasses an individual’s thoughts and feelings about physical appearance. Other illnesses, such as anorexia, often complement body image issues. Historically, popular media such as television and magazines have shaped body image perceptions. Such presentations have negatively affected body image due to their “perfectionist” nature. Body image is a significant component of personal identity, so it should be treated as a sensitive matter.
Nowadays, social media is a crucial benchmark platform for checking body image standards. Such culturally-based beauty standards evoke weight concerns, body dissatisfaction, eating disorders in women, and thin-ideal internalization. Social media mainly present two ideals of the body, thinspiration, and fitspiration (Cohen et al. 2; Raggatt et al. 2). Fitspiration refers to images intended to beautify the thin body and weight loss, while fitspiration are images that glorify fitness. Content with such bodies often presents thin or ultra-thin women with athletic bodies posing in sexually appealing postures.
Women without such body images often feel left out and dissatisfied with their bodies. However, society is changing for the better. Over the years, these overly glorified body ideals are becoming a thing of the past. This is due to the emergence of the concept of the body positivity movement in a bid to promote the inclusivity of all bodies. The body positivity movement has come to denounce the ultra-thin and athletic body ideals for women.
This movement’s central idea is to promote the acceptance of all bodies and to challenge popular body stereotypes purposed by society. The body positivity movement dates back to the 1960s in the United States and Canada as a reaction to the several anti-fat sentiments witnessed at the time (Cohen et al. 3). The movement’s main aim was to promote the acceptance of fat people, especially women, by discouraging their victimization and discrimination.
Another purpose was to challenge the societal ideals of thinspiration to ensure all bodies were accepted unconditionally despite size, appearance, or shape. Recently, the body positivity movement has found a base in the popular social networking site Instagram. Over the last few years, there has been a surge in Instagram accounts talking about body positivity. According to Cohen et al., a search for the hashtag #bodypositive on the platform yielded over seven million results; the hashtag #bodypositivity brought back over two million results (Cohen 3). This only suggests the significant magnitude of the movement on social media. Positive statements about fat women often complement such hashtags to justify their societal existence. This sometimes portrays the idea that although people may be fat, that is not an abnormal state or a hindrance to any regular activity. According to, this trend is in protest to counter the traditional narrative of a perfect body, a phenomenon that has long left people with fat bodies underrepresented.
Over the years, people across the globe have recognized that social change is a critical global issue that must be addressed. Social media platforms like Instagram are among the most effective platforms for driving this change. Unlike traditional media like television and magazines, the content on Instagram and other social platforms is often individualistic, which is why most users find such content salient and relatable. An individual is highly likely to be inspired or discouraged by a social media post more than a television ad.
This makes social media a potent tool for promoting body positivity agendas. According to Tiggemann and Anderberg, the focus is mainly on Instagram due to its photograph and video-sharing feature. Instagram is also quite popular globally, hosting over one billion active users worldwide (Tiggemann and Anderberg). Most Instagram users are adolescents and young adults not older than twenty-nine. On Instagram, people can follow each other and view their content. In most cases, women with these “acceptable” body images have a huge following. Followers often compare their body appearance with these “perfect” images, mainly staged to gain inspiration on various topics like healthy eating (Raggart et al. 10). According to the social comparison theory, adolescents and young adults tend to be to perform an upward comparison. This is because they are not adequately aware of the reality of society and are highly influenced by perceptions.
These comparisons are often primarily based on appearance. This trend is most common in girls and women. As mentioned earlier, because body image is a significant self-identity concept, such comparisons evoke dissatisfaction and general discontent (Tiggemann and Anderberg). Instagram, therefore, is a platform where social comparison is a great part of usability. On Instagram, it only takes a simple scroll to view several images of women with near-perfect body images. This perfectionist ideal has been known to cause body dissatisfaction and self-objectification, especially among women.
Interestingly, there is a trend that tends to counter these false ideals and promote awareness of the perfectionist nature of Instagram. There are millions of posts related to body positivity, whereby champions of body positivity use strategies like positive statements and images to drive the “fat activism” agenda. For example, according to Tiggemann and Anderberg, a key trend in Instagram is the idea of “Instagram vs reality.” In this strategy, an Instagram image is compared to the actual image of the person (Tiggemann and Anderberg). The primary method for delivering such messages is through videos on Instagram. A body positivity champion may share their body acceptance journey with their followers to apprise them of the severe effects of a negative body image. It is critical to note that social platforms are a powerful strategy for promoting body positivity messages in modern society. Most body positivity champions based on Instagram and other social media sites mainly encourage body acceptance and awareness.
Body acceptance advocates’ main appeal is that people should love their bodies the way they are since the traditional body image perspectives are misleading. Such scenarios are meant to encourage people to avoid getting consumed by unachievable body goals that may take a lot of time and resources, not forgetting the psychological toll on the individual. Body acceptance, thus, avers that it is okay to be fat because that is also a body type.
Such appeals also encourage people to beat body image illnesses like anorexia nervosa and bulimia, which are all eating disorders associated with trying to attain an inaccessible body. Similarly, the trend of body image positivity is also becoming popular in research. Over the past few years, there has been a trend in literature to enhance the understandability and emulation of positive body image. Scholars and academicians concerned with body image literature have done significant research to enlighten people about body image issues.
This promotes body acceptance and awareness among the general public. For example, in her book, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love, Sonya Renee Taylor offers a detailed criticism of societal obsession with the perfect body. She then calls on people to develop “radical self-love” because it is the human inherent natural state (Taylor 21). Although Taylor’s approach to writing may appear informal in some instances because she occasionally uses African American slang, her message is precise.
She radically advocates accepting all bodies regardless of appearance, shape, or size. Taylor appeals to her readers to develop self-confidence by accepting who they are (Taylor 19-25). According to Taylor, body image positivity encompasses critical concepts, including body appreciation, body acceptance, internalization of beauty, development of a body care routine, inner positivity, and information filtering (Taylor 5). Taylor has also echoed these components in an attempt to promote the concept of radical self-love.
According to my own evaluation of the issue, I think there should be more uptight content filtering techniques on social platforms to filter unrealistic and staged content. Also, I think social media rules should be more stringent on content promoting negative body image to discourage people from the obsession with “perfect” bodies. Social networking sites play a significant role in promoting negative body image. Such sites also have broader global usability, which is why they have a critical role in promoting positive body image.
Works Cited
Cohen, Rachel, et al. “#Bodypositivity: A Content Analysis of Body Positive Accounts on Instagram.” Body Image, vol. 29, 2019, pp. 47-57.
Raggatt, Michelle, et al. ““I Aspire to Look and Feel Healthy Like the Posts Convey”: Engagement With Fitness Inspiration on Social Media and Perceptions of its Influence on Health and Wellbeing.” BMC public health, vol. 18, no. 1, 2018, pp. 1-11. Web.
Taylor, Sonya Renee. The Body is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2021.
Tiggemann, Marika, and Isabella Anderberg. “Social Media is Not Real: The Effect of ‘Instagram vs Reality Images on Women’s Social Comparison and Body Image.” New Media & Society, vol. 22, no. 12, 2020, pp. 2183-2199. Web.