Insufficient physical activity remains a major public health concern, heightening the risk of a multitude of health concerns as well as negatively impacting mental health. Many far-reaching public health campaigns attempt to promote physical activity. Online social networks offer the ability to reach vast numbers of people; however, what began as a means of positively delivering exercise/lifestyle interventions has led to a dangerous trend. Read on to learn the down side of fitness influencers.
Glorifying the Thin Ideal
“Fitspiration”, a widespread social media phenomenon intended to inspire viewers to establish healthier lifestyles, has unfortunately also led to negative psychological outcomes such as body dissatisfaction and eating disorders. Fitspiration refers to images and words posted on social media designed to inspire viewers to engage in physical activity and achieve a toned, muscular body. Although fitspiration initially set out to provide healthier solutions to the past trend of “thinspiration” (glorifying thinness and encouraging unhealthy eating behaviors), sadly this endeavor proved unsuccessful. Data published in the journal Body Image revealed that a significant number of messages found on fitspiration websites focused solely on appearance as the prime reason to exercise. Much of the content likewise encouraged favoring dietary restrictions. Further research will help elucidate the impact of such commentary on viewers’ psychological health.
Are We Inspiring or Damaging Our Health?
While many popular Instagram fitspiration accounts offer well-intentioned content such as sample workouts, many accounts contain female objectification or promotion of unhealthy/unattainable body shapes. Fitspiration Instagram accounts, popularized by well-known influencers, offer the ability to share photos and videos of exercise, healthy food choices/recipes, and inspiring quotes to empower individuals who strive for a physical change. The more popular accounts boast over 100 million hits/posts.
Searching through the majority of such posts, one will certainly come across only thin, super fit and athletic-looking women promoting exercise/fitness/wellness. Perhaps these influencers posted with the best of intentions; but a small study examined the short-term effects of such content on viewers’ mood and body image. Comparing subjects’ responses after exposure to such blog posts revealed that, in addition to inspiring dedication to exercise for some individuals, seeing these blog posts also resulted in greater body dissatisfaction, negative moods, dangerous eating disorders and a lower perception of one’s sexual attractiveness.
Our Possibly Skewed Perception of Real, Attainable Beauty
Researchers who studied the potential harm caused by fitspiration content strongly believe that the limited variety of body shapes on display leaves viewers with the feeling that only thin and toned bodies measure up to the societal standard of health and beauty. Many of these posts place such a strong emphasis on appearance and objectification of the body that they ignore the benefits of staying fit for physical functionality. By solely promoting appearance-based reasons to engage in exercise, they (perhaps unwittingly) dance dangerously with body image concerns and disordered eating.
Pictures Speak Volumes
In 2014, Evelyn Meier and James Gray published interesting findings in the journal Cyberpyschology, Behavior and Social Networking. They determined that the total amount of time spent by adolescent girls on Facebook did not determine their body image concerns, but rather the amount of time spent engaging in posting photos and viewing friends’ photos. Elevated appearance exposure, but not overall FB usage, significantly correlated with dissatisfaction at the number on the scale, a strong drive for thinness, and issues of self-objectification.
Give this data, we can only imagine the implications for eating disorder prevention programs. (On a personal note: when this author spent time at a residential eating disorder clinic, Facebook had not reached its pinnacle. However, residents could not have access to any fashion-type magazines, for the very reasons discussed above. Society inflicted a tremendous amount of emotional/psychological/physical damage as a result of images in magazines. Today, Facebook has succeeded in multiplying this problem exponentially.)
Must We Adhere to Society’s Version of Perfection?
Another study including over 400 undergraduate females divided the subjects randomly, exposing half to fitspiration images and the other half to travel Instagram images. The results, which did not come as a big surprise to the scientists, showed that viewing fitspiration models on Instagram led to lower self-perceived sexual attractiveness among women than did the travel images, regardless of whether the travel pictures showed thin, fit women. The present findings uphold previous data that had highlighted the detrimental effects of exposure to such Instagram profile images on body dissatisfaction; yet these current findings go a step further by showing that exposure to such photos exerted a negative influence on the way women perceived their sexual attractiveness.
Can Strong Serve as the New Skinny?
Today’s image of a healthy and fit female body might herald the beginning of a shift in our cultural ideal of physical attractiveness. Many women have begun speaking out, citing a desire for a visibly toned physique rather than the ultra-thin “Twiggy” look (also known in the media as “heroin chic”!). One study conducted on a college campus investigated the emotional impact of athletic and muscular fitness-idealized images compared to traditional thin ideal images. The researchers randomly assigned 106 female students, ranging in age from 18-22 years old, to view one of three sets of images: thin ideal, athletic ideal, or muscular ideal. Upon collecting reaction data following the viewing, it appeared that exposure to athletic ideal and thin ideal images led to increased body dissatisfaction; however, looking at images of muscular females did not elicit any negative thoughts from the subjects.
Food For Thought
Several years ago, the Dove Soap company promoted a program entitled “Campaign for Real Beauty”, which encouraged women of all sizes to embrace their bodies and love the skin in which they lived. This led to an overwhelming uptick in positive self-esteem, especially among female adolescents and those in their early teens.
Only recently have experts come across an inverse problem within our country: women whom physicians would classify as morbidly obese, harboring a considerable number of health risks, now choose to embrace their larger size rather than taking a difficult look at making changes purely on the basis of improving their health, well-being and potential longevity.
The question in front of us now, and what hopefully will inspire researchers to delve into, revolves around finding the optimal balance. At what point does society feel pressured to pursue an unrealistic and unhealthy ultra-thin body; and at what point does society (and influencers) speak out to those dangerously overweight individuals, encouraging weight loss and fitness purely as a functional health issue and not a beauty/unattractive issue?
Fitness and wellness influencers wield more power than they perhaps realize. Can society harness this power in a positive direction, promoting fitness, functional movement and better health regardless of one’s size? Can these same influencers help severely overweight women find the passion and determination to lose weight and gain control over their lives without diminishing their self-esteem?
References:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24237288/
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/sjop.12752
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1740144515000893?via%3Dihub
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1740144517300657
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26995158/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27045871/
Cathleen Kronemer is an NFPT CEC writer and a member of the NFPT Certification Council Board. Cathleen is an AFAA-Certified Group Exercise Instructor, NSCA-Certified Personal Trainer, ACE-Certified Health Coach, former competitive bodybuilder and freelance writer. She is employed at the Jewish Community Center in St. Louis, MO. Cathleen has been involved in the fitness industry for over three decades. Feel free to contact her at trainhard@kronemer.com. She welcomes your feedback and your comments!
