The power of body image – does how we look regulate how we behave?

Do we exercise to feel healthy? Or to look good? Dealing with the influence of social media on our health and wellbeing

Flinders University Associate Professor Ivanka Prichard is researching the impact of body image on people’s behaviour. Picture: Supplied

Keen observation of people’s behaviour – and how that affects their wellbeing – informs the research of Flinders University Associate Professor Ivanka Prichard. Her intensive studies into body image, physical activity and eating behaviour began when she worked at a fitness centre as an aerobics instructor, and she learned from some class participants that their reasons for exercising were largely triggered by body image issues.

“It was a more pressing issue than I imagined,” Associate Professor Prichard says. “My early research clearly linked exercising for appearance-based reasons with body image concern. Concerns about body image also occur at such key moments as getting married or having children, so I’ve examined women’s experiences at each of these life stages and come up with ways to prevent others from experiencing the same things. In the past decade, this has been amplified by the impact of social media on people’s health behaviours.”

Associate Professor Prichard’s research into the influence of social media on body image was triggered by concerns voiced by some of her Flinders University students about the appearance-focused posts of female Instagram influencers, and that it made them feel bad.

“If it made them feel bad, I wondered how many more young women felt the same way – which started a series of experimental studies to test the impact of different types of social media content.”

Pursuing her curiosity on this subject has presented Associate Professor Prichard with some alarming outcomes. “Research shows that body image is linked closely to a person’s health and wellbeing,” she says.

Her research also found that “healthy alternatives” in the social media realm, such as #fitspiration online posts, which aim to inspire fitness, don’t make people feel better about themselves and don’t result in people improving their exercise behaviour. “We found that these posts actually make women feel bad about their bodies, so this type of inspiration does not translate into actual exercise behaviour.”

She has also observed popular social media trends and platforms that have harmful consequences. This includes platforms such as Tik-Tok using an algorithm that feeds For You pages with more of its own preferred content – which may have detrimental effects on viewers – rather than a user’s preferred choices.

“The isolation of people during the Covid era certainly accelerated the impact of social media – and that influence is not going away, so we must learn how to deal with it,” Associate Professor Prichard says. “We have also started to test social media content that may make people feel better, so we can encourage them to follow that rather than social media content that we know can be harmful for them.

“Ultimately, our work must help educate people on how various social media platforms work – including an understanding of how algorithms and privacy filters work – and how to use social media feeds more wisely, to accept positive images and deny access to negative influences. It’s too easy at the moment for people to be negatively affected, and that can be changed.”

The sum of Associate Professor Prichard’s research has helped Flinders University become the home of the Embrace Impact Lab, a new health and wellbeing research initiative to help young Australians and their parents tackle body image issues, supporting a national campaign led by 2023 Australian of the Year, Taryn Brumfitt.

The lab represents the research arm of The Embrace Collective, a national charity led by Ms Brumfitt and Dr Zali Yager that aims to promote positive body image messages to more than one million Australian children through educational activities and events in schools, sports clubs and the wider community.

It also links into the Federal Government’s $6.2 million package for The Embrace Collective to develop and implement nine key programs in 2023-2024, with the Embrace Impact Lab then providing independent evaluation of these programs.

This includes the Embrace Kids Classroom Program and Embrace Kids film, providing evidence-based, age-appropriate tools to help school teachers promote a positive message of body appreciation to young people, while also educating parents and educators about changed behaviours and improved ways that we talk about bodies.

The rollout of the Embrace Kids Classroom Program and evaluation of its effectiveness will be supported by South Australian-based charities Breakthrough Mental Health Research Foundation, which is supporting a PhD position, Chris McDermott’s Little Heroes Foundation, supporting work in schools, and Flinders Foundation, which is funding researchers to evaluate the program.

Flinders University Associate Professor Ivanka Prichard. Picture: Supplied

“The Embrace Impact Lab provides the key that can turn 20 years of body image research into translatable programs that will have a positive effect on people,” Associate Professor Prichard says. “Now that we have been able to identify specific body image problems through our research, the lab will also be aiming to produce further resources so that we can overcome them.”

Other work by the Embrace Impact Lab will focus on testing educational resources related to early childhood and childcare workers, to ensure they use appropriate body image narratives that will then continue with consistency into a child’s school years. There will also be separate materials to guide sporting and fitness environments for use by sports coaches, dance teachers and fitness professionals.

“Sport has been identified as a place where the body is on display and, while it’s important for the body to be functional, modern society also places importance on body aesthetics as well. Therefore, we have to ensure we create environments where people can feel good about their body image.”

Associate Professor Prichard says working in conjunction with The Embrace Collective underlines the importance of research to support advocacy work – and that such a strong partnership also elevates the credibility of the new evidence-based programs that are being introduced by The Embrace Collective.

“It presents a unique opportunity for our research to have such a prominent person engaging with mainstream media, doing high-profile advocacy work for public health with government and having a platform that can broadly disseminate research-based resources,” she says. “It will help ensure all the programs that come out have their intended effect on individuals and wider society.”

Beyond the Embrace Impact Lab’s focus on helping children, Associate Professor Prichard will continue to examine more integrated threads of body image research, including promoting the positive body image of mothers. “We are looking at interventions to promote positive body image among mothers, because if we can enhance how mothers feel about themselves, that will have a wonderful role model effect on children and families as well. It all plugs into the improved health and wellbeing of everyone.”

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