“Fitspirationis a popular social media trend that depicts images of thin women posing in sportswear or engaged in fitness activities.
Research has found that this trend, which aims to inspire viewers to engage in health-promoting exercises, often sexualizes and objective women body. Fitspiration can strengthen narrow body ideals – often unrealistic or unattainable – under a veil of promoting health and fitness.
Researchers have consistently found negative psychological effects of exposure to this type of content. The success of fitpiration in inspiring people to exercise is less clear. In the few studies published on this subject, there is no proof for the pretend that looking is inspiration increases exercise.
In fact, some evidence shows a decrease in exercise after viewing inspiration. And while inspiration can inspire people to exercise, exercising for the primary purpose of changing one’s appearance can have adverse effects on mental health.
User representations including weight
Social media content that positively portrays diversity in body size, shape, and weight can help address fitpiration issues.
“Wholesale” messages – a term that has been recovered as a neutral descriptor of body size in response to negative connotations and historical oppression against fat – or heavier women positively engaging in fitness activities may promote positive results for mental health and exercise. Presenting positive representations of higher weight users can countering the harms of anti-fat bias in exercise images.
In a recent research study conducted in the Body Image and Health Lab At Western University, we tested whether social media content including weight could elicit more “psychologically adaptive” exercise patterns compared to traditional fitpiration. The motivation for psychologically adaptive exercise is rooted in the pursuit of health and pleasureand promotes psychological well-being, while the motivation to exercise is rooted in guilt, social pressure or the desire to modify the body can affect psychological well-being.
Content including weight
We recruited over 1,000 young women to see either positive portrayals of heavier women exercising or typical inspirational content on social media, and measured changes in a range of psychological outcomes, including motivation to exercise.
We found that women who engaged in weight-inclusive social media content were more motivated to exercise and reported more adaptive and psychologically sustainable exercise motivation. In contrast, women who viewed typical fitpiration images did not report higher intentions to exercise. They also reported more dysfunctional reasons for exercising, such as losing weight or improving their appearance.
Although our study confirms that fitpiration can have adverse consequences on women’s body image and health behavior, it also suggests that content including weight could be a psychologically adaptive alternative. Positive portrayals of heavier women who exercise can counter the idealization of thin bodies that is common on social media, while cultivating health-promoting exercise.
Weight-inclusive social media content has the potential to combat the anti-fat stigma and promote inclusivity in fitness spaces.
