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Appearance ideals are culturally informed beauty standards that inform society of how a person should look so as to be deemed appealing or desirable (Jacobi & Cash, 1994). Pressure to match appearance ideals can contribute to increased body dissatisfaction (BD; Cohen et al., 2019); BD is an unfavourable attitude toward one’s physical appearance arising from a perceived difference between one’s actual and ideal appearance (Heider et al., 2018). Approximately 49% to 84% of adolescents report experiencing BD (Dion et al., 2015), with dissatisfaction increasing with age (Bucchianeri et al., 2013). These numbers are troubling, as BD is associated with poor psychological health and well-being, including increased risk for low self-esteem, depressive symptoms, and suicidal ideation (Cafri et al., 2002; Goldschmidt et al., 2016; Kim & Kim, 2009; McCreary & Sasse, 2000; Paxton et al., 2006), reduced quality of life (Griffiths et al., 2017), and clinical eating disorders (Allen et al., 2015; Stice, 2002; Stice et al., 2011).
Over the past decade, social media have been a contributing factor to increased BD among young women and men (Fardouly et al., 2015; Fardouly & Vartanian, 2016; Fox & Rooney, 2015; Holland & Tiggemann, 2016; Kim & Chock, 2015; Tiggemann & Slater, 2013). It has been suggested that Instagram, in particular, contributes to BD more than other social media sites because of its predominant interactive, image-sharing format (Fardouly et al., 2015; Lonergan et al., 2019). This format induces a heightened culture of appearance evaluation, social comparison (Pedalino & Camerini, 2022), and self-objectification (Tiggemann & Anderberg, 2020) fostered by the ability to like and comment on posts (Ruckel & Hill, 2017). Instagram users can follow family, friends, celebrities, companies, brands, brand ambassadors, influencers, and content creators and access Instagram virtually anywhere once it is installed on a smartphone, providing limitless opportunities for social comparisons and engagement with idealized images. Furthermore, photos and videos are often selectively chosen and edited to cater to dominant societal appearance ideals, depicting most women with thin, visibly toned bodies (Carrotte et al., 2017; Fardouly et al., 2015), and men with low body fat, a muscular upper body, and toned abdominal muscles (Carrotte et al., 2017; Grogan & Richards, 2002; Ridgeway & Tylka, 2005). These images that are shared on Instagram cause harm to psychological well-being by implying that only a certain body type can be physically fit and by linking specific body types to peak health (Deighton-Smith & Bell, 2018; Grabe et al., 2008; Labre, 2005; Ricciardelli et al., 2010). Furthermore, in media, women with overweight or obesity and men with underweight or low musculature tend to be stigmatized or used as a convention to sell remedial products, or to be simply absent altogether (Fikkan & Rothblum, 2012; Morrison et al., 2003).