Marketing strategies are changing how businesses sell their products. The body positivity movement is causing consumers to examine companies to determine if their intentions are authentic. Some of the ways consumers evaluate company authenticity include examining corporate social responsibility reports, types of advertising, or the brand-cause fit between the company and the body positivity movement. The author of this study followed two companies (Dove and Aerie) that are known for body positive advertising messages and two companies (Mattel/Barbie and Victoria Secret) that are known for promoting unrealistic body expectations. The author examined each companies’ mission statement, annual report, and types of media being used to determine whether the companies were doing what they say they are doing. The researchers found that Dove and Aerie demonstrated company values consistent with their body positivity campaigns; however, both had opportunities to increase their emphasis on inclusion and diversity in their advertising campaigns and media presence. Mattel and Victoria’s Secret had inclusive and diverse campaigns and media presence but focused on empowerment of women rather than body positivity. In the final analysis, Aerie had the most consistency between its brand and its body positivity campaigns. Further, the author found that Aerie’s campaigns promoted true body positivity with models of various ethnicities, sizes, disabilities, and illnesses. Aerie has raised the bar for companies joining the body positivity movement by encouraging women to accept the “imperfect” bodies they were born with. This study has academic and industry contributions due to the comparative analyses of the body positivity marketing campaigns of American-owned brands. The results could inform companies of their strengths and areas of opportunity in consumer perceptions of brand authenticity and could provide direction for future studies focused on body positivity marketing.

The Authenticity of Body Positivity in the Media: A Comparative Analysis of Four American-Owned Companies Emma Mink and Dr. Kelly Atkins, Department of Marketing and Management, College of Business, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN. Marketing strategies are changing how businesses sell their products. The body positivity movement is causing consumers to examine companies to determine if their intentions are authentic. Some of the ways consumers evaluate company authenticity include examining corporate social responsibility reports, types of advertising, or the brand-cause fit between the company and the body positivity movement. The authors of this study followed two companies (Dove and Aerie) that are known for body positive advertising messages and two companies (Mattel/Barbie and Victoria Secret) that are known for promoting unrealistic body expectations. The authors examined each companies’ mission statement, annual report, and types of media being used in order to determine whether the companies were doing what they say they are doing. The researchers found that Dove and Aerie demonstrated company values consistent with their body positivity campaigns; however, both had opportunities to increase their emphasis on inclusion and diversity in their advertising campaigns and media presence. Mattel and Victoria’s Secret had inclusive and diverse campaigns and media presence but focused on empowerment of women rather than body positivity. In the final analysis, Aerie had the most consistency between its brand and its body positivity campaigns. Further, the authors found that Aerie’s campaigns promoted true body positivity with models of various ethnicities, sizes, disabilities, and illnesses. Aerie has raised the bar for companies joining the body positivity movement by encouraging women to accept the “imperfect” bodies they were born with. This study has academic and industry contributions due to the comparative analyses of the body positivity marketing campaigns of American-owned brands. The results could inform companies of their strengths and areas of opportunity in consumer perceptions of brand authenticity and could provide direction for future studies focused on body positivity marketing.

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. / Doctor of Philosophy / 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.

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Background:  Body positivity promotion has recently received great attention, both from companies as well as from consumers. The responsibility of companies to promote a healthy body image and be inclusive of all people through their marketing activities is increasing, as the body positivity movement on social media has started to expand and change consumer demands for underwear apparel.                                    Purpose:  The purpose of this study is to examine Swedish female consumers’ online purchasing behavior toward underwear apparel. In order to find explanations as to which factors influence consumer purchase behavior, and what companies can do better, to promote body positivity and make the consumer satisfied.    Method:  The study follows a positivism approach to understand social phenomena and provide explanations through theories.  A quantitative research approach is used by conducting a survey about underwear apparel and body positivity on female consumers. The empirical data is analyzed through a statistical software, SPSS, and the interpretations are guided by the use of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), the MAO framework, background studies, and a conceptual framework developed from the TPB. The conceptual framework includes five added factors to test behavior. Conclusion:  The empirical findings presented positive, statistically significant associations among the introduced factors from the conceptual framework and the purchasing behavior for underwear. The findings also suggest that companies should take a more active role in diversity inclusion in their marketing of underwear, in order to take a step further in their body positivity promotion.

I detta arbete görs en undersökande fallstudie av artisten Lizzo, med fokus på attvisa hur den allmänna samhälleliga diskursen rörande större kroppar påverkar enartist som kroppsligt står utanför rådande kroppsliga ideal. Med utgångspunkt i skrivna intervjuer har ett grundresonemang etablerats, och vidare har detta följt med genom analys av konserter, en musikvideo, en musikanalys och en låttextanalys. Materialet analyseras med hjälp av Faircloughs diskursbegrepp som metod där viss fokus även lagts på Boréus tillägg om subjektspositioner, och med intersektionalitet, body positivity och Ekmans (2012) begrepp viktordningen som teoretiskt ramverk.Analysen visar på att Lizzo som enskilt fall arbetar mot den allmänt vedertagna samhällsdiskursen runt kroppsideal och den större kroppen genom både fysisk handling på olika sätt och språkligt agerande med motdiskurs diskurs där inslag från bland annat body positivity-rörelsen syns med. Resultatet visar att Lizzo reagerar mot samhällsdiskursen, med sitt artisteri och med sin persona, med en motdiskurs som går emot de rådande skönhetsideal både språkligt och fysiskt, och kan argumenteras har skapat en ny form av kroppsaktivism.

abstract: This study explored the perspectives and experiences of eight women active within a particular location of the collective social media landscape. One aspect of the research centered around critiquing mainstream media diets for encouraging fat stigma and deepening the negative effects of stereotyping larger bodies. The research questions centered around transgressive media diets, specifically those that were body positive, and focused on if they could help to eradicate fat stigma and educate the masses on false stereotypes. To examine this, eight plus-size fashion bloggers and/or plus-size models were interviewed following a semi-structured format. These women, as bloggers and Instagrammers with a strong presence in the plus-size fashion industry, were both content producers as well as consumers, and their personal narratives enabled the study to better understand the complex interconnections between production and consumption, self-expression and the politics of self-representation, the cooptation of these self-representations by profit-oriented media interest, and how commodification shapes the transgressive potential of these representations. The research also found that many content creators came to transgressive media diets because they saw a lack of representation and decided that they must make that representation for themselves. The study also examined what community building meant within the porous landscape of social media platforms and the relationship between identity building and community building as social processes. Many of the participants brought up examples of fat discrimination yet many defined themselves as "confident" or "badass", thus finding ways to empower themselves despite the pressure of societal norms. Some of this empowerment came from finding a community online. Finally, these plus-size models and fashion bloggers moved through a thin ideal industry by demanding and being examples of diversity. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Women and Gender Studies 2018

This critical study examines how TikTok content from body positive trends may influence power relations and reinforce female body negative discourses. The study takes its departure primarily in Michel Foucault. However, additional researchers were brought in to expand on Foucault’s ideas by e.g., introducing gender to Foucauldian theory. 30 TikTok videos belonging to two different body positive trends have been collected and undergone a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis according to Foucauldian principals. Findings from the analysis illustrated how users acknowledged and heavily depended on societal body negative discourses to create body positive content. More specifically, this was illustrated when users self-categorised as plus size and pointed out body parts e.g., stomach rolls, that are seen as less desirable in society. Users furthermore directly engaged in behaviour, which was found to be body negative e.g., implying the existence of abnormal and imperfect bodies. Effectively, this behaviour was identified as performative and rooted in a fear of being seen as non-progressive and body negativeThe conclusive results of this thesis thus suggest that users inevitably produce and reproduce body negative discourses by relying heavily on the very same discourses in their TikTok communication. Essentially, the users are then contributing to the social and feminist problem of weight-based discrimination and marginalisation.

This project asks how fat stigma impacts customers' and retail workers' experiences shopping and working in plus-size clothing stores. Interview data highlight how customers and workers engage in emotional labor, emotion work, and aesthetic labor to manage emotions about the body and fat stigma. Moreso, it explores the commercialization of the body-positivity movement by analyzing the use of body-positive branding and marketing. A content analysis explores the website and social media presence of a contemporary plus-size store, Torrid, which is an example of a company engaging in body-positive branding and marketing. While results vary between the main website and social media accounts, they reveal that Torrid engages with customers in an inclusive body-positive tone and with intimate/friendly language via their marketing; however, Torrid does not fulfil its body-positive intentions when it comes to body and size inclusivity of its models. Interview data also highlight that customers do not find plus-size retail stores to be inclusive and body-positive spaces. Customers report they lack physical accessibility, affordable clothing, stock of extended sizes, or clothing for individuals with diverse gender identities. Customers and workers engage in emotion work, emotional labor, and aesthetic labor to negotiate between style, affordability, and accessibility.

"The Gordita's Guide to Body Positivity" is an autobiographical documentary reflecting on society's expectations of the female body image and how it affects Latinx women. Through personal recollections, media content, and archival material, the film explores beauty expectations, body discrimination, and body positivity. The document analyzes the documentary styles such as autoethnography and narration incorporated into the film and provides historical and theoretical context to body image in the Latinx culture and how the media has affected body image, beauty ideals, and eating disorders. In addition, the pre-production, production, and post-production process is detailed.