Body Image And Social Media: Scientists Analyze Harmful ‘Thinspiration’ Photos Of Women

Source:
Exploring her favorite topics on social media, a young girl may stumble upon all sorts of unexpected images. A new UC Davis study systematically analyzed content that appears on Twitter and Pinterest under two innocuous tags commonly used by those trying to lose weight: "thinspiration" and "thinspo." Nearly half the images featured headless bodies of women and predominantly focused on the pelvis, abdomen, or thighs, while also tending to be sexually suggestive. Yet not all social media is alike, with the two tools differing in key ways. Pinterest tended to show images that had “a littl