Are All Bodies Good Bodies?: Redefining Femininity Through Discourses of Health, Beauty, and Gender in Body Positivity

Streeter, Rayanne Connie

Are All Bodies Good Bodies?: Redefining Femininity Through Discourses of Health, Beauty, and Gender in Body Positivity

dc.contributor.author	Streeter, Rayanne Connie	en
dc.contributor.committeechair	Calasanti, Toni M.	en
dc.contributor.committeechair	Labuski, Christine	en
dc.contributor.committeemember	King, Neal M.	en
dc.contributor.committeemember	Hester, Rebecca	en
dc.contributor.department	Sociology	en
dc.date.accessioned	2019-06-07T08:00:18Z	en
dc.date.available	2019-06-07T08:00:18Z	en
dc.date.issued	2019-06-06	en
dc.description.abstract	Previous research has explored the ways in which health, beauty, and gender discourses are used to promote and regulate an ideal of thinness. Further, research has explored how the fat acceptance movement and fitspiration has fought to resist such narratives. However, in the age of hashtag feminism a new group on social media, body positivity, has become the buzzword among celebrities, news conglomerates, and fashion companies. This study draws on interviews with body positive influencers and Instagram posts tagged #bodypositive and #fitspiration to examine the extent to which body positive influencers and users modify understandings of normative feminine body ideals and to what extent they resist and accommodate traditional discourses of gender, health, and beauty. In doing so, I explore which bodies are newly included and who is left out.	en
dc.description.abstractgeneral	In that last 5 years body positivity has gone “mainstream”—gaining the attention of women across the United States, circulating across a variety of mass media sources, being viral content on social media, and becoming the buzzword among celebrities, news conglomerates, and fashion companies. But what is body positivity and its impact? This dissertation sought to explore that question as it relates to gender, health, and beauty in the context of social media. Drawing on interviews with 12 body positive influencers and an examination of 210 Instagram posts tagged #bodypositive or #fitspiration I examine the extent to which body positive influencers and users modify stereotypical understandings of femininity, particularly the idea that the healthiest, most attractive, and most feminine body is a thin body. Findings suggest that body positivity is understood by influencers as made up of five aspects: (1) a connection to the fat acceptance movement; (2) an opposition to diet culture; (3) the belief that all bodies are good bodies; (4) celebrating self-love; and (5) proclaiming that all people have a freedom to be beautiful. In addition, my examination of Instagram posts shows that although a greater variety of body sizes appear in posts tagged #bodypositive than those tagged #fitspiration, both center hyper-feminized and sexualized white women who transgress stereotypes of femininity in one dimension, fatness or muscularity. As such, Instagram influencers and users struggle to negotiate an adherence to the traditional understandings of femininity, beauty, and health at the same time as they seek to expand them.	en
dc.description.degree	Doctor of Philosophy	en
dc.format.medium	ETD	en
dc.identifier.other	vt_gsexam:20609	en
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10919/89894	en
dc.publisher	Virginia Tech	en
dc.rights	In Copyright	en
dc.rights.uri	http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/	en
dc.subject	Body Positivity	en
dc.subject	Gender	en
dc.subject	Beauty	en
dc.subject	Health	en
dc.subject	Social Media	en
dc.subject	Instagram	en
dc.subject	Fat Studies	en
dc.title	Are All Bodies Good Bodies?: Redefining Femininity Through Discourses of Health, Beauty, and Gender in Body Positivity	en
dc.type	Dissertation	en
thesis.degree.discipline	Sociology	en
thesis.degree.grantor	Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University	en
thesis.degree.level	doctoral	en
thesis.degree.name	Doctor of Philosophy	en