In a recent study published in Body Image, researchers performed a content assessment of body-positive videos on the social media platform TikTok.

Study: The body positivity movement shouldn’t be all that positive on TikTok: A content evaluation of body positive TikTok videos. Image Credit: Jacob Lund / Shutterstock.com

Social media and body positivity

Using appearance-focused social media platforms like Snapchat and Instagram has been found to have a stronger association with body dissatisfaction as in comparison with platforms like Facebook and Twitter. So far, TikTok, a video-based social media platform that permits users to create and share music-infused videos, has received less attention from researchers on this respect.

The TikTok body positivity movement has been criticized for not featuring larger bodies and flagging such a content as violating community guidelines. The current study aimed to research the alignment of body positivity TikTok videos with the basic principles of body positivity.

In regards to the study

TikTok videos were chosen for the study’s evaluation by conducting a seek for #bodypositivity on a newly created account. The study only included videos from public accounts to enhance the general applicability of the findings.

In March 2021, 25 videos every day were collected for a complete of 14 days to acquire a various range of content as in comparison with collecting all videos in a single day. The info collection period led to the identification of 350 videos that featured a minimum of 1 individual and were mostly one to 2 minutes in duration.

Two undergraduate psychology students underwent training sessions to turn out to be acquainted with the coding manual, themes, and coding process and, because of this, were considered coders for this study. Videos were analyzed by the coders to find out the age range, perceived gender, and race/ethnicity of every individual featured.

The video subject’s body size was estimated using the Pulvers Figure Rating Scale, which consists of nine line drawings that correspond to increasing body sizes based on body mass index (BMI) scores. The coders selected a figure that closely resembled the body size of the person within the video.

Videos were evaluated based on their portrayal of positive body image themes reminiscent of body appreciation, a broad conceptualization of beauty, body acceptance/love, inner positivity, adaptive investment in body care, protective filtering of information in a body-protective manner, and fat acceptance. Appearance-focused themes reminiscent of weight reduction, weight loss program, exercise, clothing, and sweetness appearance were also considered, together with other relevant themes.

Study findings

A complete of 342 distinct TikTok videos were included within the sample, about 99% of which featured just one person, while 0.9% and 0.3% featured two and three people, respectively. Roughly 95% of the chosen videos featured a lady, while only 4.1% featured a person.

About 69% of people within the TikTok videos were identified as White, 12.6% as Black or African American, 2.3% as Asian, 1.2% as Latino, 1% as Middle Eastern, and 13.5% as another race.

Most individuals gave the impression to be between 15 and 20 years of age. Individuals of their 30s or 40s were unusual within the videos.

The videos included 1.2% of ‘underweight,’ about 50% of ‘normal’ weight, about 27% of ‘chubby,’ and 5.2% of ‘obese’ individuals. Most individuals shown within the videos reflected cultural beauty standards to some extent.

Almost 68% of videos within the sample didn’t contain any body-positive image themes. Comparatively, 22.5% of people exhibited one positive body image theme, 8.2% exhibited two themes, 1.2% exhibited three positive body image themes, and 0.3% exhibited 4 body positivity themes.

About 17% of the videos featured probably the most prevalent body-positive theme of body acceptance and love. Nine videos depicted inner positivity, fat acceptance, protective filtering of information in a body-protective manner, broadly conceptualizing beauty, adaptive investment in body care, and body appreciation.

No significant association was observed between the inclusion of body positivity themes in videos and weight reduction, exercise, clothing, beauty, thin praise, body or weight food shaming, or adherence to cultural beauty standards. Nevertheless, a notable correlation was observed between the presence of body-positivity themes and the extent of objectification present, as not one of the videos that contained body-positive themes included objectification.

Conclusions

TikTok body positivity videos were found to steadily depict Western beauty standards and featured young White women. These videos rarely explicited themes related to body positivity, objectifying content, negative appearance-focused themes, or contradictory messaging.

Taken together, the study findings indicate that TikTok’s body-positive videos generally lack content that aligns with the body-positivity movement and rarely features appearance-focused messaging.