Today, it was controversially asserted that the prevalence of fitness culture in social media harms the mental health of young women.
Fitspo, as it is informally known, involves toned influencers sharing photographs or videos of themselves exercising to inspire others.
On social media platforms like Instagram, where women may garner millions of followers by sharing fitness-related content, such posts are popular.
Jen Selter, an American fitness influencer who routinely posts videos of herself working out, has 13.5 million subscribers to her YouTube channel.
However, according to Aurélien Daudi, a sports science researcher at Malmo University in Sweden, such women are falling into a narcissistic trap in which they are only motivated to exercise by a desire for external praise.
He stated that the posts coming from this nurtured attractive image may cause other women psychological discomfort as they compare their actual bodies to these idealized versions.
Viewing and partaking in this conduct is associated with a decline in body image, overall self-perception, and mental health, he wrote in a journal.
He continued, “Fitspiration captures the essence of the negative aspect of social media.”
This culture places a strong emphasis on the well-trained, attractive, and “sexy” physique.
He believed that the genuine intent of these posts might be discerned by analyzing their subject matter.
Even when the captions contain explicit allusions to exercise, the images on social media are typically not focused on the training itself, as stated by the author.
The majority of the images depict carefully designed positions or accentuate specific body regions.
He contends that fitspiration enables women to circumvent social standards about the ostentatious display of the body as a sexually appealing object.
This, claims Mr. Daudi, has been labeled “pornification” by philosophers, a trend in which increased exhibitionism, even of “intimate” behavior, is exploited to attract social attention.
With its rapid pleasure in the form of likes and shares, social media facilitates this trend.
The upshot, according to him, is that women exercise solely to please others with their bodies, as opposed to being motivated to get fit.
Then, he added, they become trapped in a “feedback loop” of sharing additional photographs for approval.
‘The phenomenon of “fitspiration,” which appears to be a benign sheep, enabling free and emancipated self-expression without restraints or inhibitions, seems to conceal a malicious wolf, ready to prey on the cracks in the facade of the self – beneath which the frail and vulnerable human subject is exposed,’ he said.
While both men and women upload images in online fitness communities, he claims that younger women are especially vulnerable because they are more exposed to media portrayals of idealized bodies.
Within the context of this phenomenon, he stated, “more young women than men publish on social media.”
Mr. Daudi’s argument was published in the journal Physical Culture and Sport Studies and Research.
Seller is one of the largest fitness motivation influencers on Instagram, with 13.5 million followers.
The 29-year-old routinely shares photographs and videos of herself in skin-tight clothing practicing yoga or using weights, with her derriere prominently displayed. Some of these posts have received up to 200,000 likes.
Some of these are so explicit that her fans have recommended she creates an account on Onlyfans and sells them as adult content.
Other Instagram users who post with hashtags such as #fitspo and #fitspiration follow a similar pattern.
18-year-old Evelyn Tamez from Arizona, who has 38,000 Instagram followers, routinely publishes photographs of her gym sessions, occasionally squeezing her breast and displaying her butt with the hashtag #fitspiration.
She frequently receives up to 15,000 likes per post.
While Instagram model Julisheli from Moscow also uses the #fitspo hashtag to display her sportswear to her over 72,000 followers on the social media network.
