JasperBennett

A couple of weeks ago, while scrolling through my Instagram feed, up popped a picture of Alexandra Shulman, former editor of British Vogue , in a swimsuit; undoctored, natural, highlighting all of her 59 year old self.  It stopped me in my tracks, mainly I think  because   it was in stark contrast to the homogeneous representation of beauty that the magazine she was at the helm of for 25 years propagated, and was consistently met with criticism for. There is a sense of melancholy in how an undoctored picture of a 59-year-old in a bikini is seen as an act of revolution. For women in Western cultures, the mass media tends to portray slender or thin bodies as attractive and associates them with success, youthfulness, or social acceptability, in contrast to overweight bodies, which are often linked to a lack of control or laziness, leading women to be dissatisfied or pressuring them to either lose weight or be thin (Grogan, 1999: 6; Mask & Blanchard, 2011:54). Social cogn...

In May 2017, The Royal Society for Public Health released a study which contended that Instagram is the �worst� social media platform when it comes to impact on young people�s mental health. The poll focused on issues relating to anxiety, depression, loneliness, bullying and body image, concluding that �social media may be fuelling a mental health crisis among young people� (BBC, 2017). These negative perceptions of social media aren�t new. In recent years, social media has become a breeding ground for moral panic, with newspapers warning that everything from sexting to selfies is indicative of some kind of health epidemic or moral deterioration. Indeed, the Royal Society for Public Health report follows the recent trend in mainstream media to �blame� social media for various social ills and highlight social media use(s) as indicative of wider social �problems�. That �millennials� (usually understood to be a cohort of people born between 1980 and 2000) are uniquely narcissistic and ent...

When you scroll through Instagram or Facebook nowadays you are bound to come across an abundance of images of thin and attractive women. Although we are accustomed to seeing beautiful women in magazines and on television, social media creates a new opportunity for users to be exposed to idealised images of their peers and their favourite celebrities. In traditional media, celebrities are presented as beautiful and ideal figures for women to aspire to. But how does exposure to attractive celebrities on social media sites such as Instagram affect women�s body image?   Instagram in particular is a unique social networking site because its prime focus is on images. Instagram users can edit and filter their images to achieve an �ideal� look, much like magazines photoshopping their images. However, Instagram is more personal than magazines. It presents celebrities and peers together on the same platform, and potentially makes celebrities seem more like friends. Given the rise of Instagra...