Photographs of women’s slim and athletic bodies posted on social media sites such as Instagram to encourage a fitter and healthier lifestyle – known colloquially as ‘fitspiration’ – actually encourage women to develop a negative self-image, according to the latest research.
Professor Marika Tiggemann, a senior academic at Flinders University in South Australia, says that while the images are intended to inspire women to be fitter and healthier, they instead present an ideal that most women believe they will never be able to achieve.
“The images that we are seeing now on social media sites such as Instagram show us photographs of very slim, very fit women who are usually young dedicated athletes,” says Professor Tiggemann.
“They are usually emblazoned with an inspiring message such as ‘be fit, be strong, be the best you can be’ but what that seems to encourage in the women they are aimed at is a feeling that they will never be able to live up to that idea coupled with disappointment in their own bodies.”
Professor Tiggemann led a small team of doctoral psychology students to examine the feeling of 130 women who viewed the images in a controlled environment at Flinders University late last year.
The women were shown images from Instagram depicting trim and athletic women in various poses with the slogans attached to them via a 10-minute slide show.
Afterwards they answered a questionnaire about their feelings.
The same group were also shown a 10-minute slide show of travel photographs from around the world and again asked how these made them feel.
The results clearly showed that while some women found inspiration in the images from Instagram many more felt intimidated and less positive about themselves
“The results showed about a difference between the intended positive feelings for some and the unintended negative feelings of the majority,” says Professor Tiggemann. “I feel this is especially telling because the images that we used in the slide shows were not of the most extreme type that can be found on social media sites.
“Many objectify women by focussing in on selected body parts such as the muscular abdominal region – the six-pack – or on a women’s long slender legs.
“The images that we used were much more ordinary so as not to skew the results. But even so, we still recorded a significant negative result.”
Professor Tiggemann says that women need to be aware of the negative impacts of the images that we find on social media.
“We live in a world that is deluged by imagery of this sort but very little research has been done so far on how it affects us,” she says. “These results are a sound basis for continuing investigation.”
