Sex Roles (2014) 71:407413
DOI 10.1007/s11199-014-0430-4
FEMINIST FORUM COMMENTARY
Research Directions in Social Media and Body Image
Julie L. Andsager
Published online: 2 November 2014
# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014
Abstract This commentary in response to Perloff (2014)
suggests considerations for studying social medias potential
influence on body image. These are derived from Perloffs
transactional model of social media and body image. In in-
vestigating how social media use may influence body dissat-
isfaction in the United States, scholars should consider how
the purposes and functions of social media differentiate them
from traditional media effects theories. Individuals may be
more likely to encounter unsought messages in social media
than in traditional media. Social media messages have the
potential to present much more diverse representations of
female and male bodies because they are mostly produced
and disseminated by individuals. Finally, social media offer
the ability to reach a variety of at-risk groups with media
literacy training. Media literacy training educates audiences
about the purposes of messages, which can increase skepti-
cism and possibly reduce message effects. Thus, media liter-
acy training may address the media-related aspect of body
dissatisfaction because it teaches critical and analytical skills.
Theoretically driven models such as Perloffs transactional
model of social media and body image provide a fruitful basis
of research.
Keywords Social media . Body image . Media literacy .
Sexual orientation . Uses and gratifications
Introduction
Scholars in gender studies and mass-mediated communication
have long attempted to explain the complex relationships
J. L. Andsager (*)
School of Journalism & Electronic Media, University of Tennessee,
333 Communications Bldg., Knoxville, TN 37996-0333, USA
e-mail: jandsage@utk.edu
among gender, race, class, media construction of idealized
female and male bodies, and the internal psychosocial factors
that mediate these connections (Brumberg 1997; Davison and
McCabe 2005; Grogan 2008). How U.S. media images portray
the ideal is of no small import because though there is no
direct causal linkage traditional mass media ideals are asso-
ciated with unhealthy negative body image (Cash 2002; Wykes
and Gunter 2005). For some girls and young women, the
internalization of a thin ideal long presented as the standard of
beauty in the United States can result in disordered eating or
over-exercising (see review in Levine and Harrison 2009).
Mediated images of female and male bodies differ around the
globe, as does the degree to which these influence cultures
because social pressure and norms associated with the impor-
tance of physical appearance vary (Lee et al. 2014). The pro-
liferation of Western models of beauty in the twentieth century
did not lead to homogeneous ideas (Berghoff and Khne
2013, p. 15). For all of these reasons (and limited space), this
review focuses on U.S. society unless otherwise noted.
Images of idealized bodies and how individuals consume
them has been extensively studied in terms of traditional
media such as magazines, television, advertising, etc. (Levine
and Harrison 2009). Little published research to date, howev-
er, has examined whether and how social media use,
specifically, may influence perceptions of physical ideals
and how best to attain those. Perloff (2014) offers a theoreti-
cally based transactional model of social media and body
image concerns that thoroughly hypothesizes the process by
which social media may increase body dissatisfaction and
result in negative affective responses.
As we consider how best to approach the conundrum of the
presumed link between social media use and body dissatis-
faction, the transactional model of social media and body
image (Perloff 2014) provides an excellent starting point. In
this commentary, I will discuss three issues that the transac-
tional model suggests not as critique but as food for thought
408
in developing future research that explores this model and
related strands of study. The first is conceptual; the second
regards generalizing to key populations; and the third pro-
poses media literacy education, which has the potential to lend
itself well to social media (Mihailidis 2014), as a potentially
ameliorative means of addressing the media-related aspect of
body dissatisfaction.
For purposes of this article, I will discuss social media as
one entity rather than attempting to differentiate among indi-
vidual platforms because Perloff (2014) examines the concept
in general. In conducting research, however, it is necessary to
recognize that these sites differ in terms of users, perhaps
making some sites more relevant to the study of young women
and body image than others. Trends in user demographics of
social media sites shift as new competition arises (Hanna et al.
2011), so it is not particularly useful to discuss those currently
most popular in great detail. It is worth noting, however, that
73 % of U.S. adults in 2013 reported frequenting at least one
site, and 42 % used more than one (Duggan and Smith 2014).
Perhaps more importantly for studying content and effects
related to demographics-based topics such as body dissatis-
faction, women far outnumber men on Pinterest (33 % of
women using compared to 8 % of men), but Twitter usage is
virtually equal. Women use Facebook and Instagram at slight-
ly but statistically significantly higher rates than men. In terms
of age, Instagram and Twitter are the province of U.S. adults
aged 1829, while the other sites are similar across age groups
(Duggan and Smith 2014).
Questioning Uses and Gratifications
Research on U.S. traditional media imagery on girls and
young women has supported its influence on body dissatis-
faction (Cash 2002; Wykes and Gunter 2005), in part because
the images of a physical ideal tend to reinforce each other in
their consistency across a generation (Bordo 1993; Brumberg
1997). Therefore, ascribing some amount of influence on
young womens body image to social media must operate on
two assumptions: first, that (at least some) youth are using
social media to seek information about body image, as in
thinspiration or pro-eating disorder websites (Borzekowski
et al. 2010) or Pinterest groups (Newcomb 2012); and second,
that images posted on social media sites may be as influential
as those found in traditional television or magazine content,
which implies a similar degree of homogeneity among social
media images (Buote et al. 2011). If these assumptions are
unmet, social media may still have an important influence on
body image, but that influence could be quite different than
that of traditional media.
The uses-and-gratifications approach to studying individ-
uals selection and consumption of media emerged in the
1970s as a means of understanding why people choose one
media message rather than another. Individuals use various
Sex Roles (2014) 71:407413
forms of media for information, diversion, and social utility
(Rubin 2009). The uses-and-gratifications approach is based
on assumptions about individuals psychological traits, their
motivations for selecting certain types of messages, and their
level of involvement with the medium and/or the message
(Katz et al. 1974; Rubin 2009). As such, according to this
approach, audience members are inherently active, identifying
(more or less) their needs, then choosing the media/message
or other communication they expect will gratify those needs.
Based on this perspective, then, if young women have selected
some form of social media to gratify a need, it seems impor-
tant to identify what site(s) they choose and how they are using
it. Therefore, Perloffs (2014) implicit assumption that young
women actively seek information on weight loss via social
media should certainly seem to apply to those who share the
individual vulnerability factors listed as personality traits in
the transactional model of social media and body image
concerns (Perloff 2014). As Perloff stated, individuals with
low self-esteem and those who strive for perfection may be
especially influenced by media images of a thin ideal. These
vulnerability factors have been identified in previous research
as predictors of body image concerns among U.S. females
(Davison and McCabe 2005; Levine and Harrison 2009). The
question then turns to the extent to which body image dissat-
isfaction may be made more salient among young women
who are not seeking such information (whether or not they
are afflicted by individual vulnerability factors) but are unin-
tentionally exposed to it. Will the latter group be more open to
raised concerns about their bodies and how to achieve the
cultural ideal because their resistance to persuasive messages
is lowered, as is the assumption in entertainment education
(Singhal and Rogers 1999)?
Some research suggests that adolescents and teenagers, at
least, do not necessarily rely on social media for information
seeking (see OKeeffe and Clarke-Pearson 2011). Based on an
exhaustive series of interviews with teens across the United
States, boyd (2014) argued that young people spend time
engaging with social media primarily for the purposes of
entertainment and sociality, not necessarily for seeking
information, which supports the notion that U.S. girls might
encounter a wider variety of body images than they would in
using traditional media. Television, film, and gaming have
migrated to a variety of social platforms, as Perloff (2014)
mentions, which busy teens (and adults) may find helpful or
necessary in order to consume the entertainment of their
choice. As for socializing, todays children, adolescents, and
teens are often physically restricted to (sometimes deceptive-
ly) safe, inside spaces or temporally restricted by lessons,
sports practice, etc., which reduces their ability to communi-
cate with peers on a face-to-face basis (boyd 2014). boyd thus
compared the seemingly continuous use of social media to the
hours-long telephone conversations that teens often conducted
with their friends in previous generations.
Sex Roles (2014) 71:407413
Of course, this is not to say that social media are inter-
changeable with traditional media. Their socially produced
nature has fundamental implications for the uses-and-
gratifications perspective that Perloff (2014) offers as a foun-
dation for the transactional model of social media. Compared
to magazines, television, and movies (regardless of the plat-
form upon which they are viewed), individuals have greater
opportunity of being exposed to media messages that they
have not sought when others post, tweet, or pin television clips
and links to TV episodes (Oliver et al. 2014). Social media
users further have the chance to view amateur and indepen-
dently produced content that might not be disseminated
through corporate or publicly funded media (Manovich
2009). This latter exposure is promising, I believe, because
it has the potential to dramatically counter the assertion un-
derlying the classic media theory of cultivation: What type of
commercial television one watches (and, we can add, the
platform used to watch) is of little relevance because the
images, narrative, and characterizations are remarkably con-
sistent (Gerbner et al. 1980; Morgan and Shanahan 2010).
This brings us to the second assumption regarding the
influence of social media on young womens body dissatis-
faction that these images are as influential as previous
research suggests traditional media images can be (see review
in Levine and Harrison 2009). One reason traditional media
imagery has been consistently linked with young womens
body dissatisfaction is the homogeneity of the medias depic-
tion of the female body, emphasizing the thin ideal (Brumberg
1997; Buote et al. 2011). The myriad individual, independent
media producers who disseminate their messages on social
media have an opportunity to potentially challenge traditional
media stereotypes of gender and idealized bodies propagated
by the mass media and the advertising industry that supports
them (Manovich 2009). Use of social media among youth
offers them connection with others from diverse backgrounds
and may allow for increased discourse about personal and
global issues (OKeeffe and Clarke-Pearson 2011, p. 801).
Social media may provide alternatives to the thin ideal, but
they are not likely to overshadow its ubiquity in traditional
media.
For young women who are not purposefully seeking
thinspiration and its like, then, use of social media may make
it more probable that a greater range of female bodies are
depicted as acceptable, though future research on content of
various social media sites must explore the extent to which a
range does exist. For instance, someone might post on
Facebook or Instagram a photo of several young female
friends some of whom are thin, some overweight or
obese having fun together, which might focus attention
on camaraderie rather than body shape. A tweet with a
photo of Marilyn Monroe could highlight the fact that she
might not be considered as beautiful given todays expec-
tations of thinness.
409
Similarly, videos such as the 2013 Dove Real Beauty
Sketches campaign (though corporately produced to promote
a brand; Murray 2013) provide counterarguments to the mass
medias idealized female form. Widespread posting on social
media made Real Beauty Sketches one of the most-viewed
advertising videos ever (Neff 2013). On the other hand, it may
be difficult for social media alone to combat the ubiquitous
traditional media ideals, propelled as they are in many coun-
tries by advertising for cosmetics, diet foods/programs, cos-
metic surgery, and weight-loss pills (Berghoff and Khne
2013). For those young women who have not (entirely) inter-
nalized the thin ideal, social media may offer the possibility of
hope.
Uses and gratifications therefore is an appropriate approach
to understanding how young women who possess vulnerabil-
ity factors may employ social media to reinforce their inter-
nalization of the thin ideal. Vulnerable young women are
likely to seek information about body image on social media
in similar ways as they do in traditional magazines (Botta
2003; Brown and Bobkowski 2011). They are unlikely to seek
materials that attempt to defy the notion that beauty is limited
to the extremely thin, the young, and (mostly) the White. For
example, a qualitative study of Black and White girls in the
United States found that, though both groups sought informa-
tion on entertainment and social issues in magazines targeting
teens, Black girls were not interested in the beauty advice and
products because they perceived those to be directed only at
White girls (Duke 2000). Thus, as scholars begin to test
Perloffs (2014) transformational model of social media, how-
ever, it may be fruitful to employ other theoretical mecha-
nisms to increase the generalizability of the model to other
health problems among young people, particularly those who
encounter such information, such as body image messages,
unintentionally.
Gender and Body Dissatisfaction
The transactional model of social media is designed to test
hypotheses particularly relevant to young U.S. womens ex-
periences regarding social media and possible influences on
negative body image and negative affect. As research incor-
porating the model moves forward, the strength of the model
will lie to some extent on its ability to incorporate these
theoretical perspectives in generalizing to the experiences of
other at-risk populations (Shoemaker et al. 2004). The vast
majority of research on media and body dissatisfaction,
Perloff (2014) notes, has been conducted on White U.S. girls
and college-age women, who remain at the greatest risk for
developing disordered eating behaviors; as more boys and
men report body dissatisfaction, it is imperative that such
models consider the ramifications for males. Moreover, the
need for examining sexual orientation and gender roles
beyond biological sex and their possible relationship with
410
body dissatisfaction, disordered eating, and exercise disorder
has become increasingly obvious (Blashill 2011).
Womens bodies have long been the subject of scrutiny
(Bordo 1993), but anorexia nervosa and other disordered
eating behaviors emerged as one of the most prominent health
problems of the 1980s for girls and young women (to a point
that Brumberg [1992, p. 136] called it communicable). It
was and still is appropriate that girls and young women
have been the focus of research on the medias role in shaping
body image and possibly contributing to disordered eating
behaviors. There can be little doubt that sociocultural pres-
sures on appearance are greater for women than for men, as
we are bombarded with messages insisting that the female
body is desperately in need of control to be socially and
aesthetically acceptable (Murnen 2011). Indeed, one U.S.
study found that while the media were most influential in both
womens and mens striving for thinness, the second greatest
predictor for women was social pressure (for men, internali-
zation of the media messages; Fernandez and Pritchard 2012).
Activists have rallied for decades to improve media por-
trayals of women (Gallagher 2001), in part calling for a wider-
ranging, realistic depiction of the female body. The medias
emphasis on outward appearance has, at least in several
regards, arguably narrowed, though perhaps not in the way
that activists had intended. That is, while the pressure on girls
and women to toil over their physical appearance remains
forceful, the sociocultural influence of the media driven in
large part by advertising (Wykes and Gunter 2005) has
expanded its focus to boys and men. The cosmetics industry
and all that it entails successfully recognized the tantalizing
prospect of a relatively untapped and lucrative market in
males, such that U.S. consumers more than doubled their
spending on mens grooming products (to $4.6 billion) from
1997 to 2009 (Newman 2010).
Men have long enjoyed a wider range of acceptable body
types in entertainment media than do women (Buote et al.
2011). It is easy to reel off a list of U.S.-produced television
sitcoms and movie comedies in which a thin (and younger)
female lead is paired with an overweight (and often older)
male star; the opposite scenario is far more elusive (Fouts and
Vaughan 2002). Yet, especially in the 21st century, the images
of men in the romance, drama, and action genres, at least
have constricted, focusing primarily on increased muscularity
(Hargreaves and Tiggemann 2009). Whereas it has not been
physically possible for the idealized U.S. female body to
become much thinner in the last 20 years (Murnen 2011),
the ideal representation of masculinity has grown more
exaggerated.
Exposure to media images that focus on mens physique
has been positively correlated with body dissatisfaction for
Canadian gay and heterosexual men (Duggan and McCreary
2004); this may hold true for men in the U.S. as well. This
dissatisfaction manifests in different ways, however.
Sex Roles (2014) 71:407413
Heterosexual U.S. men, not surprisingly, tend to desire to be
more muscular even than they perceive potential mates might
want (Smith et al. 2011). Gay men, though not eschewing
muscularity, have been found to idealize much thinner body
shapes than heterosexual men (Strong et al. 2000). Indeed,
content analyses of photographs in U.S. mainstream maga-
zines from the 1970s to the mid-2000s found that males
depicted in the magazines became much more muscular
(Law and Labre 2002). Those in United States-produced
LGBT publications became more muscular as well, but unlike
their counterparts in mainstream magazines, they grew nota-
bly thinner over time (Schwartz and Andsager 2011). Follow-
ing the same media-based pattern as heterosexual men that
is, exaggerating the so-called ideal gay men expect that their
potential mates would prefer a leaner figure than they desired
for their own bodies (Smith et al. 2011). And a meta-analysis
of studies on gay and heterosexual men that included mea-
sures of gender roles (e.g., femininity, masculinity) found that
incorporation of those roles complicated the matter further
(Morrison et al. 2004).
Similarly, despite the plethora of studies examining media
imagery and body dissatisfaction among young women, few
have included sexual orientation or gender role. When they
do, media influence tends to be missing from analysis. Les-
bians evince slightly less body dissatisfaction than heterosex-
ual women, according to a meta-analysis (Morrison et al.
2004). More recently, a large-scale U.S. survey found little
difference in body dissatisfaction levels between lesbians and
heterosexual women, though it reinforced the significantly
higher levels in gay men than heterosexual men (Peplau
et al. 2009). Thus, the interplay of media images, body dis-
satisfaction, and sexual orientation among women remains a
somewhat murky area. It may be yet another direction in
which the transactional model of social media and body image
(Perloff 2014) might be employed.
Generalizing to these and other at-risk populations may
require a reconsideration of eating disorders as the only
(potential) behavioral outcome of the transactional model.
Perloff (2014) acknowledges the complexity of causes and
likely contributors to eating disorders, with social media
exposure taking the place of traditional media in this model.
The consequences of negative body image may take on
other forms of behaviors that, when taken to extreme, can
become dangerous; these may occur instead of or in addition
to disordered eating behaviors. Such behaviors may include
compulsive exercising (Homan 2010), cosmetic surgery
(Callaghan et al. 2011), and the use of steroids or supple-
ments to build muscle in males (Levine and Chapman
2011). Therefore, in using the transactional model of social
media as a framework for understanding how this form of
media may influence negative body image, it is important to
match the behavioral outcome(s) to the population under
study.
Sex Roles (2014) 71:407413
Media Literacy on Social Media
Media literacy is a tool that can serve to educate consumers to
be active, critical processors of the messages we receive via
media whether advertising, entertainment, or news (Potter
2004). It involves teaching consumers to understand media as
industrial institutions and how that structure influences the
visual, aural, and written content of messages. Perhaps more
importantly, media literacy programs attempt to educate con-
sumers on why messages are presented in the manner that they
are and discuss how those messages might affect audiences
(Potter 2004). This provides individuals with skills to decode
messages and counterargue them (Mihailidis 2014). A meta-
analysis of media literacy studies about one-third of which
dealt with body image and/or eating found that the interven-
tions had positive effects on knowledge, influence, attitudes,
self-efficacy, and behavior (Jeong et al. 2012).
Most media literacy programs have been implemented in
elementary and high schools and universities as supplementa-
ry units to existing curricula (De Abreu and Mihailidis 2014).
For example, among college students, even one-time inter-
ventions have been shown effective in reducing womens
social comparison to the thin ideal depicted in the media
(Posavac et al. 2001). Media literacy education among U.S.
college women has proven beneficial in moderating their
response to the ideal female body image propagated in the
media while improving the womens own body image (Cham-
bers and Alexander 2007). A program for Australian junior
high students found that even brief media literacy training
regarding body image had positive effects after more than
2 years (Wilksch and Wade 2009). These and many other
studies illustrate the potential effectiveness of media literacy
education in ameliorating body dissatisfaction in adolescents
and young adults.
While school-based programs are promising, they do not
have the potential to reach all of the at-risk populations. Public
libraries are another vehicle for transmitting media literacy
(Agosto and Magee 2014), but they also serve a self-selected
audience. Levine and Chapman (2011) concluded that a
multisystem approach is necessary to empower youth and
adults (p. 108) to start to challenge media-propagated images
of narrow and harmful idealized bodies. As part of this mul-
tisystem approach, social media are capable of dramatically
expanding the reach of media literacy programs on body
image (Mihailidis 2014). Such messages, if they are well
done, may be encountered by young women unintentionally
(as discussed earlier regarding the uses and gratifications
perspective) as they are shared among peers or posted in social
media. An excellent example of media literacy education on
self-image is the 2006 Dove Evolution film, a 75-second
montage depicting the transformation of an ordinary womans
face into one suitable for a magazine make-up advertisement.
It reveals the number of people (e.g., make-up artists, hair
411
stylists) involved to cover blemishes, even the skin tone, apply
copious make-up, and highlight and style the womans hair
and that is mere preparation for retouching her photographed
image by lengthening her neck, etc. Within a month after its
release on YouTube, the Evolution video had been viewed more
than 1.7 million times (Neff 2006). An experiment conducted
with English adolescent girls found that viewing the film
seemed to produce immediate benefits regarding social com-
parison to ultra-thin advertising images (Halliwell et al. 2011).
If the transactional model of social media and body image
concerns can be used to predict social media effects such as
increases in body dissatisfaction and negative affect (Perloff
2014), it may also help us understand how best to employ
media literacy messages through social media to combat the
negative body image messages in traditional media. With
enough theoretically driven, skillfully produced messages that
illustrate how and why womens bodies and mens bodies are
manipulated in media imagery, social media users may have
the potential of being exposed to one at least once. Such
messages may be attractive to parents and teachers, who might
disseminate them so they could easily be accessible to youth,
as media literacy campaigns in Hong Kong have experienced
(Lee 2014). Empowering young people to critically analyze
media imagery may be more effective than persuasion-
grounded communication campaigns (Levine and Harrison
2009). Further, targeted media literacy messages might be
spread through at-risk groups through online communities
(Chou et al. 2009).
Conclusion
Body dissatisfaction and its possible outcomes such as disor-
dered eating behaviors are serious, complex problems. Re-
search over the years has left little room for doubt that tradi-
tional media images of ultra-thin, young women (and ex-
tremely muscular men) play a part however small, however
varied across the affected populations in perpetuating body
dissatisfaction (Grogan 2008). Social media may continue in
the same vein, as Perloffs (2014) transactional model of
social media and body image concerns predicts. Certainly,
for young women who possess the individual vulnerability
factors incorporated in the transactional model, social media
may likely contribute to body dissatisfaction and its conse-
quences, according to uses and gratifications (Katz et al.
1974). Social media may even exacerbate these effects be-
cause young women who possess those traits are able to seek
out a like-minded community and receive positive reinforce-
ment in their quest for thinness (Ransom et al. 2010). Perloffs
model, which is conceptually solid and intuitive, provides a
thoughtful set of propositions that can be clearly tested.
Given the diversity of social network sites and the users
who frequent them, however, it is also possible that unintend-
ed effects may arise. The young women using social media to
412
obtain information and encouragement (thinspiration) regard-
ing weight loss may inadvertently be exposed to a more
diverse and potentially positive set of messages about the
body than they would via traditional media. Conversely, users
not seeking thinspiration may be unintentionally exposed to
those messages. Scholars need to incorporate these possibili-
ties when testing the extent to which the uses and gratifica-
tions perspective allows for alternative outcomes in the trans-
actional model of social media. Similarly, the model could be
tested using a variety of at-risk populations with appropriate
behavioral outcomes in addition to or in place of eating
disorders alone.
Because social media consist of the material that individ-
uals (and advertisers) have submitted, it is possible to spread
media literacy education specifically, messages related to
analyzing the construction of female and male bodies in
traditional media to at-risk populations. The ubiquity of
Facebook (used by 84 % of U.S. adults; Duggan and Smith
2014) means that parents, family, friends, teachers, and pop-
ular celebrities can easily disseminate media literacy messages
by sharing them. This possibility may operate similarly to the
transactional model of social media (Perloff 2014), though it is
probable that the uses and gratifications perspective would not
drive the model because encountering media literacy mes-
sages is presumably more unintentional than seeking
thinspiration.
As social media continue to evolve, it is beneficial to have
well-grounded models to test how they may influence indi-
viduals body dissatisfaction. The extent to which media
scholars can apply to social media the extant theories of media
effects and use developed for traditional media is not entirely
clear. Perloffs (2014) transactional model of social media and
body image concerns incorporates conceptual frameworks
related to social and traditional media, which is likely the
way of the future (and the present).
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