Instagram images tagged #postpartumbody fail to capture realities of postpartum life
Images posted to Instagram with the hashtag #postpartumbody tend to idealize the aftermath of childbirth on a woman’s body, according to a study published in Healthcare.
“Despite the hashtag being #postpartumbody, only 5% of images focused on features commonly associated with a postpartum body, including stretch marks, supple stomach, cellulite, sagging breasts or cesarean scars,” Megan L. Gow, PhD, a senior lecturer at Children's Hospital Westmead Clinical School at the University of Sydney, and colleagues wrote.
Of the 2 million images tagged #postpartumbody, Gow and colleagues used 600 images split evenly between the “top” and “recent” categories in Instagram, and coded for adiposity, muscularity, pose and attire.
“This comparison was conducted to determine features of more popular posts which may assist in establishing whether Instagram is an acceptable platform for conveying health information to postpartum women,” according to a press release from the International Congress on Obesity in Melbourne, Australia, where Gow and colleagues are slated to present the data.
There were two main conclusions drawn from the study: Women are less likely to be interested in receiving health information from Instagram posts than they are in viewing images of other women, and that these tagged images are more likely to depict women showing weight loss, fitness attire and a general low adiposity.
“Women with lower body fat, and in fitness attire, are more likely to post images of themselves on Instagram than women of higher adiposity. ... [V]iewing such imagery may worsen body satisfaction at this already vulnerable life stage,” Gow and colleagues wrote. “Given that Instagram is highly accessed by women during the postpartum period, the inclusion of health information may be necessary to interrupt the potentially harmful content observed in our study.”
References:
- Gow ML, et al. Healthcare. 2022;doi:10.3390/healthcare10091802.
- International Congress on Obesity. Images of women on Instagram tagged with #postpartumbody do not reflect the actual population of women who have recently given birth. Published Oct. 4, 2022. Accessed Oct. 5, 2022.