Body Image
Scales for measuring body image:
Sociocultural attitudes towards Appearance Questionaire-3.
Sociocultural attitudes towards Appearance Questionaire-4.
Body Image Questionnaire
You should also look into potential problems with the questions (eg they're usually modeled on white/Western women in case this affects your results)
Negative Body Image
Negative affects that Social Media causes on Body Imaging
Pinterest or Thinterest? Social Comparison and Body Image on Social Media suggests that "individuals who follow more fitness boards on Pinterest are more likely to report intentions to engage in extreme weight-loss behaviors"."You look like a skinny White girl" Black cultural effects on the body image of thin black women.
Attitudes Toward Selfie Taking in School-going Adolescents: An Exploratory Study.
Health in Social Media: The Pros and Cons to the Effect it has on Readers asserts that an individual’s perception about himself or herself ultimately becomes the deciding factor in whether health in social media is positive or negative.
Social Media and Body Image Concerns: Further considerations and Broader Perspectives.
"This is not pro-ana": Denial and disguise in proanorexia online spaces.
Examining the influence of social media on body image: Mis Perfection, a misconception.
Alarming Engagements? Exploring Pro-Anorexia Websites in/and the Media.
From Pro-Ana to Bikini Bridge: The Online Discourse of Eating Disorders.
Beauty Ideals in the Checkout Aisle: Health-Related Messages in Women’s Fashion and Fitness Magazines.
books:
If you are taking a historical perspective, try to find Reducing Bodies: Mass Culture and the Female Figure in Postwar America, which outlines key developments in the perception of women's body shapes
SBS's Insight explored body image last year, with a focus on cosmetic surgery.
Stress and social media fuel mental health crisis among girls links anxiety, depression and self-harm to negative body image
Poor body image makes girls less assertive and risks health, study finds links poor body image to significant decreases in socio-emotional well-being
Keywords you'll need
- self-objectification
- body surveillance
- body shame
Snapchat andBody Image
The Conversation has a good introduction to this topic, and outlines the limitations as well as the findings of their study.
Snapchat photo filters linked to rise in cosmetic surgery requests outlines the issue and has links to two studies
These journal articles look at social media and body image. You'll need a local library log-in to access most of them, but some can be read online. Read the abstracts (summaries) to get an overview of the issues, then read the conclusions of the interesting articles to find out more.
Negative effects of Snapchat on body image
- Posting Selfies and Body Image in Young Adult Women: The Selfie Paradox suggests that Instagram etc are more about conforming to social expectations than expressing pride in one's body, despite people editing their images to present an idealised self. (read online)
- Selfie-Esteem: The Relationship Between Body Dissatisfaction and Social Media in Adolescent and Young Women
- The relationship between Facebook and Instagram appearance-focused activities and body image concerns in young women found that young adults who interact with appearance based social media (esp. 'thinspiration' accounts on Facebook and Snapchat) were very likely to have an unhealthy focus on thinness.
- The Impact of Different Forms of #fitspiration Imagery on Body Image, Mood, and Self-Objectification among Young Women found that "exposure to fitspiration images decreases body satisfaction and increases negative mood, highlighting the potential negative consequences of engaging with fitspiration media.
- Impact of Instagram use in young women is a Macquarie Uni study that found "fitsperation" images correlated with poor body image.
- Use of social networking sites and associations with skin tone dissatisfaction, sun exposure, and sun protection in a sample of Australian adolescents found that teenaged girls using snapchat were less happy with their skin colour and more likely to engage in tannign activities that might be linked to skin cancer.
Complicating the issues
- Parental Control of the Time preadolescents Spend on Social Media: Links with preadolescents’ Social Media Appearance Comparisons and Mental Health found that pre-teens whose parents controlled their use of social media had better body image than those whose parents didn't.
- The Selfie Generation: Examining the Relationship Between Social Media Use and Early Adolescent Body Image found that "body surveillance was stronger among girls and adolescents who are particularly focused on others for approval."
- The effect of Instagram “likes” on women’s social comparison and body dissatisfaction found that increasing the number of likes on an image made the viewers less satisfied with their own face. This suggests that they are using the "likes" button to find out what social norms they should conform to
- “You look great!”: The effect of viewing appearance-related Instagram comments on women’s body image discovered that "comments form an important and integral part of Instagram imagery, one that has implications for body image in its own right." Only appearance based comments correlated with low self-image in the viewer, not the pictures themselves or comments about things other than appearance
- Social media is not real life: The effect of attaching disclaimer-type labels to idealized social media images on women’s body image and mood suggests that "the use of disclaimer comments or labels on social media may be ineffective at reducing women’s body dissatisfaction." this suggests that initiatives like Own your feed may not help to solve he problem.
- Social media literacy protects against the negative impact of exposure to appearance ideal social media images in young adult women but not men found that social media literacy made women (but not men) less likely to have a negative body reactions after viewing the Snapchat images.
The other viewpoint
- ‘Selfie’-objectification: The role of selfies in self-objectification and disordered eating in young women suggests that there is not relationship between body image and social media use unless the person is already suffering from body or eating issues.
- ‘Written in these scars are the stories I can’t explain’: A content analysis of pro-ana and thinspiration image sharing on Instagram found that the increasing visibility of pro-anorexia images in Snapchat to be a "positive development" in terms of consciousness raising.
Random unsorted stuff on this topic
- Body Image and Disadvantaged / Vulnerable Youth
- More than Just Child’s Play?: An Experimental Investigation of the Impact of an Appearance-Focused Internet Game on Body Image and Career Aspirations of Young Girls found that playing an appearance based computer game made pre-teen girls less hapopy with their bodies nad made them more likely to be intersted in traditionally feminine careeers.