Body Positivity on Social Media

The arguments for and against the movement

A post by Minh Duong and Anna Kuschezki

Monday, 15 August 2022

Filters, dieting, Photoshop, ‘thinspo’: Over the past decade, body image has consistently been a major topic whenever we discuss social media. The negative effects of visual platforms such as Instagram, particularly on young female users, have been discussed time and again. So much so, in fact, that by now, many people seem to be fed up with hearing about it.

But has all this discussion really changed anything?

Looking at the social media platforms themselves, the answer is no. Instagram still does not have a strict policy against body shaming; there are no regulations on labelling edited images, and face-altering filters are available to users in a matter of seconds.
Nevertheless, there has been a shift within the community on these social media platforms – a shift in what users themselves post and consume. Nowadays, you no longer just see skinny models and diet tips on these platforms – but also a multitude of posts celebrating curvier bodies and ‘imperfect’ physical features: inspirational quotes or illustrations about self-love, pictures of stretch marks and cellulite, models slouching in front of the mirror to show what they look like when they’re not posing.

All of these examples can be linked to a movement that has been gaining popularity on social media in recent years. A movement intended to change the way we define beauty: the body positivity movement.

What does ‘body positivity’ actually mean?

There are a few terms that frequently appear in connection with the body positivity movement. Although some of them are very well known, it is worth taking a quick look at them once more to fully understand the meaning of these definitions as well as the body positivity movement itself.

Body Image

Body image is ‘the mental picture that people form of their bodies as a whole, including their physical characteristics and their attitudes towards these characteristics.’ So, basically, it is how people see themselves, how they feel about their bodies and their shapes, and also how they physically feel in their own bodies.

Body Shaming

Body shaming is the act of making negative comments about a person’s body. It can relate to one’s own body or someone else’s. The comment may relate to a person’s size, age, hair, clothes, food, or level of attractiveness. Body shaming can lead to mental health issues, including eating disorders, depression, anxiety, low self-esteem and body dysmorphia, as well as a general feeling of hating one’s body.

Body Positivity

The final term, which is the main focus of this blog post, ‘body positivity’ is a social movement centred on the acceptance of all bodies, regardless of size, shape, skin tone, gender and physical abilities, whilst challenging contemporary beauty standards as an undesirable social construct.

History and purpose of the body positivity movement

So, how did it all begin? Why was there a need for such a movement? The body positivity movement exists primarily to combat a diet-obsessed world. Across social media, there are constant reminders of gruelling beauty standards that one must meet to be ‘good enough’ for society. For example, one might see online posts categorising food into ‘good’ and ‘bad’, or workout routines, as well as photoshopped images of unrealistic bodies. Diet culture has a huge impact on society, and there are few safe spaces in the media where one can escape the toxicity of this trend.

To some, diet culture may not seem like such a big deal, because there is nothing wrong with eating or striving to be healthy. But the problem with diet culture is that it equates healthy eating with extreme measures such as calorie counting and restriction, or overexercising to the point of starvation, malnutrition and eating disorders.

There are many negative effects that one might experience, such as hair loss, bone fatigue, increased stress, low blood pressure and more – and no one deserves to suffer because of their appearance. Because of this, society has begun to learn to accept everyone, to remember that all bodies are beautiful, and that is when the body positivity movement was created.

Looking at the history and evolution of the body positivity movement itself, it began in the early 1960s in New York, before growing into the ‘National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance’. In 1996, the term ‘body positive’ came into use, and the website thebodypositive.org was launched. The movement became known to the general public and flourished around 2012, shifting from a focus solely on fat acceptance to embracing the natural physical variations of the body.

How does the movement manifest itself on social media?

So how exactly does this movement find its way online? Today, social media is one of the quickest ways for information, news or trends to spread from person to person, country to country, all around the world. And as a social movement centred on body image itself, platforms such as Instagram and TikTok are truly the ideal environment for the body positivity movement to become the talk of the town.

The hashtags #bodypositivity and #bodypositive on Instagram are both very popular and widely used. On 31 July, these hashtags had around 10 and 18 million posts respectively, with many influencers posting and sharing pictures of their bodies accompanied by positive comments. One example is Mik Zazon, a blogger whose main focus is on normalising body images, who has roughly one million followers on Instagram. Here you can see one of her photos with the caption “Dear Body, I love you”. Another example is Miah Carter, a video creator with hundreds of thousands of followers. Her main focus is on lifestyle, fashion and self-love.

Another platform worth mentioning is TikTok – a social media platform based mainly on videos. The hashtag #bodypositivity on the platform has a staggering 24 billion views worldwide.

Body Positivity in Marketing

As a topic that has attracted a great deal of attention in society, body positivity seemed like a golden opportunity for many brands to promote their products. Some brands actually did a good job of using it as a marketing tool and launched some highly influential campaigns:

One of these was the #Aeriereal campaign by the brand AERIE, which generated positive feedback from its customers. The campaign encouraged customers to love themselves, to love their ‘real’ bodies and their ‘real’ selves. It was a way not only to engage customers but also to promote products – through the voices of the customers themselves. Part of their campaign was also the ‘Real Talk’ series, which featured podcasts by empowering and inspiring women. The AerieReal campaign was a huge success and continues to generate posts on Instagram. By August 2022, there were already more than 360,000 posts using the hashtag.

Another remarkable campaign was ‘My Beauty My Say’ from Dove, featuring women who spoke out about the negative things or actions that other people had said or done to them; yet, in the end, it didn’t matter to these women because they wouldn’t let anyone define who they are. The ‘I’mNoAngel’ campaign by the fashion brand Lane Bryant is aimed at plus-size women. This was also a successful campaign, with the aim of celebrating women’s sexiness and helping them feel comfortable in their own skin.

Most marketing campaigns drawing on the body positivity movement use women as their models. One of the few to embrace male body positivity was Hanes’ ‘Every Bod’ campaign. This inclusive marketing strategy received a great deal of positive feedback on social media – because men, too, should feel confident in their bodies.

There are also a few brands that missed the mark when they tried to use the body positivity movement to promote themselves. One example of this is Protein World. They used a conventionally attractive and slim model labelled as ‘beach body ready’ in one of their adverts, which caused a great deal of controversy. The brand Dove seized the opportunity and advertised its product using a more inclusive definition of a ‘beach body’, which was subsequently widely praised on social media.

Another instance where Dove got it right with its body-positive marketing was when it posted a response to a Victoria’s Secret advert featuring supermodels with ‘The perfect body’ written on the banner. Dove responded by releasing their own banner featuring women of different shapes and sizes, regardless of skin colour or age, and stating that these women are, in fact, examples of ‘The Perfect Real Body’.

Not everything about body positivity is actually positive

Whilst well-intentioned, the body positivity movement is far from perfect – and is facing criticism from both within and outside the movement. The issue most frequently raised is that body positivity promotes unhealthy lifestyles, such as unhealthy eating habits, or that it ‘glamourises’ obesity by showcasing larger bodies and labelling them as beautiful. Another issue is the lack of diversity within the movement. Finally, the movement has come under fire for allegedly creating a stressful atmosphere, making people feel pressured to love their bodies and appearance no matter what. Let us take a closer look at these issues:

Promoting obesity and unhealthy lifestyles

A perfect example of this issue is plus-size model and body positivity advocate Tess Holliday. In 2018, she posed for the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine and sparked a huge debate on social media over the issue of ‘glorifying’ or ‘promoting’ obesity. Critics voiced concerns that Cosmopolitan, as a fashion and style magazine, was conveying to readers that Holliday’s body type was the new ‘normal’ or a new trend. Others praised the magazine for being inclusive and appreciative of different sizes and body types.

There have been many other instances where this issue has been discussed. Some experts have also expressed concerns that normalising larger bodies could contribute to overweight and obesity becoming widespread health concerns. However, to date there are no empirical studies to support the claim that body positivity leads to unhealthy behaviours. Nevertheless, this remains a major – and heated – debate whenever body positivity is discussed.

Diversity issues

Just as in many other areas – both online and in real life – diversity is a major factor in the body positivity movement and becomes an issue when there is little of it to be found in the content created in the name of the movement. Over the years, there has been a fair amount of empirical research on this issue, for instance with researchers analysing body positivity hashtags on social media platforms and examining the types of people and bodies being featured in posts.

In one study from 2020, researchers analysed the body positivity hashtag on Instagram and found that the majority of posts featured young, white women who were conventionally attractive, able-bodied and cisgender. The study showed that the representation of different cultures, races, gender identities, ages or disabilities was very limited in the posts found under the movement’s hashtag. Furthermore, the study found that most of the women pictured were not plus-size. Most wore clothing sizes ranging from 0 to 4. And whilst thin people are not meant to be excluded from the movement, it is a fact that the movement was created to represent larger body types. The results of the study show that there has been a clear shift in how body positivity is defined and practised on social media and that, in many instances, the movement is failing to meet its initial goal of being inclusive and for everyone.

Pressure to love your body

The problem with the body positivity movement is that it seeks to escape one form of pressure regarding one’s body – only to replace it with a new one in the process.

Even with positive messages about bodies, the content within the movement remains heavily focused on appearance and thus reinforces the tendency for people to think constantly about their bodies and how they look. Instead of feeling the need to lose weight or look skinnier, people have criticised the fact that they now feel the pressure to love their appearance no matter what – which is not as easy as it might sound. And when they cannot do that – when they cannot love their body no matter what, 24 hours a day – they ultimately feel worse than they did when they were caught up in the mindset of diet culture.

But there might be a solution…

…Body neutrality!

Body neutrality is a concept that stems from the idea of body positivity but has turned out to have a very different focus:

Whilst body positivity aims to change what we define as beautiful by promoting acceptance and appreciation of all body shapes and sizes, body neutrality aims to change how much importance we attach to our appearance in general. This means the ultimate goal is to stop caring so deeply about our appearance and to understand that our appearance is not linked to our worth.

This, of course, technically renders the body positivity movement obsolete: there would be no need to change beauty standards if there were no beauty standards to begin with.

Another key aspect of practising body neutrality is focusing on what our bodies do for us rather than how they look. A body-positive statement might be ‘I love my legs, they are beautiful’, whilst a body-neutral statement might be ‘I love my legs because they help me run’. Finally, the body neutrality movement is also about acknowledging that feeling good about yourself and your body is not always the case – and that that is okay.

Many supporters of the movement see body neutrality as the ideal middle ground between the opposing messages of diet culture and body positivity.

So what does this mean? Is the body positivity movement ‘good’ or ‘bad’?

Either can be true, for different people with different lives, in different situations. For some, seeing a body-positive post on Instagram might be just what they need to look at themselves more kindly the next time they pass a mirror. For others, moving from ‘I hate my body’ to ‘I love my body, no matter what’ seems impossible and creates a great deal of pressure. Others might not feel sufficiently represented within the movement to truly identify with it – so addressing issues such as the lack of diversity would be vital to truly transform the body positivity movement into what it originally stood for.

The body neutrality movement is working to break down beauty standards and the value we place on appearance – but it is unlikely that either body positivity or negativity will disappear any time soon. One thing is certain: it is important that we, as a society, keep the conversation about body image and everything that goes with it going – both the good and the bad.

We’ll leave you with one final message to round off this blog post: practise body positivity, neutrality or whatever works for you mindfully – especially online. Love yourself wisely. 🙂

Sources for this article:

Header image: A Worthy Brand (n.d.): Image May Contain Table And Indoor. https://www.pinterest.de/pin/679199187547807272/ ( Accessed on 15 August 2022)

Cohen, R., Newton-John, T., & Slater, A. (2021). The case for body positivity on social media: Perspectives on current advances and future directions. Journal of Health Psychology, 26(13),
2365–2373.

Gelsinger, A. S. (2021). A Critical Analysis of the Body Positive Movement on Instagram: How Does it Really Impact Body Image?. Spectra Undergraduate Research Journal, 1(1), 4.

Lazuka, R. F., Wick, M. R., Keel, P. K., & Harriger, J. A. (2020). Are we there yet? Progress in depicting diverse images of beauty in Instagram’s body positivity movement. Body Image,
34, 85–93.

Muttarak, R. (2018). Normalisation of plus-size and the danger of unseen overweight and obesity in England. Obesity 26: 1125–1129.

Rees, A. (2019). Beyond Beautiful: A Practical Guide to Being Happy, Confident, and You in a Looks-Obsessed World. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press.

Tylka TL and Wood-Barcalow NL (2015). What is and what is not positive body image? Conceptual foundations and construct definition. *Body Image* 14: 118–129.

deVos, K. (29 May 2018). Opinion: The Problem With Body Positivity. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/opinion/weight-loss-body-positivity.html. (Accessed
on 2 June 2022)

Kensler, I. (18 February 2022). The dangerous effects of diet culture across social media. https://thehollyspirit.org/4872/showcase/the-dangerous-effects-of-diet-culture-throughoutsocial-media/ (Accessed on 8 June 2022)

Morgan, M. (30 April 2015). ‘Yes. We are beach body ready’: New poster featuring curvy, bikini-clad women spoofs controversial Protein World advert. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3062882/Yes-beach-body-ready-New-poster-featuring-curvy-bikini-clad-women-spoofs-controversial-Protein-World-ad.html (Accessed on 8 June 2022)

Pasqual, K. (11 August 2020). Body positivity and inclusivity in marketing campaigns. https://penji.co/body-positivity-marketing/ (Accessed on 8 June 2022)

Pham, D. (17 January 2020). The truth about the body-positive social movement. https://ptduong3009.medium.com/the-truth-about-body-positive-social-movement-4ad4eb8471f5 (Accessed on 8 June 2022)

Schlüter, N. (6 July 2020). Body positivity is too much effort for me. Having to think my cellulite is great is just as stressful as the beauty ideal of the perfect body. Jetzt.de. Süddeutsche Zeitung. https://www.jetzt.de/gender/body-positivity-der-zwang-sich-schoen-finden-zu-muessen-nervt. (Accessed on 2 June 2022)

Selzer, J. (21 October 2020). 15 Body-Positive Activists You Need to Follow on Instagram, Like, Right Now. https://www.cosmopolitan.com/health-fitness/g13352390/body-positivity-instagram-accounts/ (Accessed on 8 June 2022)

Weingus, L (2018). Body neutrality is a body image movement that doesn’t focus on your appearance. HuffPost, 15 August. Available at: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-is-body neutrality_n_5b61d8f9e4b0de86f49d31b4 (Accessed 6 June 2022)

West, M., Juby, B. (29 April 2022). What to know about the body positivity movement. Medical News Today. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/body-positivity. (Accessed on 2 June 2022)