Four main health and wellness trends have emerged on social media over the past several years: thinspiration, fitspiration, body positivity, and body neutrality. Thinspiration is intended to inspire consumers to obtain a very thin body and is often considered to be promoting disordered eating behavior. Fitspiration intends to inspire consumers to participate in exercise and aspire to a “fit” body. Body positivity promotes acceptance and appreciation of all body types and body neutrality prioritizes the function of the body, rather than its appearance. The content of body neutrality posts has gone largely unexamined, and no study has comparatively examined the content of fitspiration, body positivity, and body neutrality – until now.

Dr. Kayla Nuss, Klein Buendel Scientist, and her co-authors have published new data on the content of Instagram posts pertaining to exercise in the journal, Psychology of Popular Media. The paper is entitled, “What’s in a Hashtag? A Comparative Content Analysis of Fitspiration, Body Positivity, and Body Neutrality Posts on Instagram.”

The research team conducted a comparative analysis of 200 Instagram posts from three categories: fitspiration, body positivity, and body neutrality. There were 605 total posts. All content types featured mostly White women, although fitspiration featured slightly more racial diversity. Most people featured in fitspiration and body positivity posts were thin whereas the majority of those in body neutrality posts were of average body size. Commercialization was the most prominent message in all three content types and weight loss was featured often in both fitspiration and body positivity posts.

Based on these results, the authors conclude that body positivity has seemingly drifted away from its original intention and body neutrality now seems aligned with the origins of body positivity. Full descriptions of the study design, methods, results, and limitations are provided in the Psychology of Popular Media publication. In the paper, the authors offer recommendations for researchers to develop social media health behavior interventions using elements of these popular content types.

This research was sponsored by Klein Buendel and led by Dr. Kayla Nuss. Her collaborators included Julia Berteletti, Dr. Barbara Walkosz, Irene Adjei, Annelise Small, Liliana Salcido Beltran, and Noah Chirico from Klein Buendel; Anne Poirier from Shaping Perspectives in South Carolina; and Dr. Danielle Arigo from Rowan University in New Jersey.