Instagram is a site for photos, and many young people use those photos as a sort of inspiration, to look and act like those people who become "influencers." In the past couple of years, many of those influencers have taken to the body positivity/neutrality movement and used their accounts as a way to reflect body diversity. Researchers at Brockport State and King University found that sites like Instagram and Facebook can both positively and negatively impact college students and their body image.
“I think the amount of exposure we have to people's bodies and appearance in a very artificial and manipulative way always gives us a sense of inadequacy when we’re looking at them.” - Analisa Arroyo, Professor of Communication at UGA
Teaching Body Image
In her Communication and Body Image course, Arroyo explores how sociocultural and personal influences on weight and appearance impact someone's body image. Throughout each semester, Arroyo invites "influencers" that use social media as a way to advocate for themselves and for topics like fat-positivity, body neutrality and typically progressive ways of thinking about body size. She goes through the history of "body ideals" through decades, looking into fashion, celebrities, TV and media and challenges her students to think about these topics in a different way.
"There’s a lot of social and psychological and behavioral factors that really make the college time period a perfect storm for the development of body image issues and disorders." - Analisa Arroyo
Arroyo said her favorite thing about teaching her body image class is when she sees a shift in the way her students see bodies, and the differences she sees from the beginning to the end of the semester. Arroyo has done extensive research on weightism, familial relationships, fat talk and the impacts they have on adolescents and adults. In her research on fat talk, she found that the use of fat talk ("I'm so fat," "this shirt makes me look fat," "I feel fat") heavily influences negative body image and mental health.
Instagram and Tik Tok Influencers Promote Body Neutrality
The hashtag #bodypositivity has over 5.8 million posts on Instagram and 3 billion posts on Tik Tok.
Instagram has long been used to promote things like #fitspiration and #thinspiration, but more recently #bodypositivity has been popular. Instagram influencers like Jameela Jamil (@i_weigh, 1.3M followers), Jessamyn Stanley (@mynameisjessamyn, 448K followers) and Stephanie Yeboah (@stephanieyeboah, 220K followers) use their platforms to advocate for body diversity as well as social justice issues.
Viral influencers for body positivity and eating disorder recovery are high in number on Tik Tok. Some larger recovery accounts are those of Victoria Garrick (@victoriagarrick4, 565.5K followers), , Brittani Lancaster (@brittanilancaster, 790K followers) and Sienna Mae Gomez (@siennamaegomezz, 3.8M followers).
UGA Student Using Instagram for Advocacy
Second year marketing major Elli Feingold started her account @eatingwithelli in 2018, it became a food blog as well as a place for her to post about her experience with eating disorder recovery and body positivity. Feingold has over 6.8K followers.
"Body positive accounts can help heal people's relationships with food and exercise, promote positive lifestyle changes and behaviors, provide educational insight, serve as inspiration, and overall put out healthy, beneficial content." - Elli Feingold
"College culture can be detrimental to people's mental health and can create unhealthy behaviors and mindsets, so body neutral and body positive pages can be a light for students who are struggling." - Elli Feingold
Credits:
Created with an image by Ray Mallick - "At a hostel in the Asakusa neighborhood of Tokyo, I noticed the colorful wood table after breakfast. It reminded me not of Tokyo but the colors of South America where I would be headed to next, almost a foreshadowing of my travels."