Social media encouraging women to be fit than just thin can be harmful: Griffith University study

PHOTOS of toned and ‘fit’ women on social media may be as harmful to their health as looking at thin women, a new study has found. Here’s why.

ONLINE fitness inspiration communities encouraging women to be fit rather than just thin can harm women’s health, a new study has found.

However, #fitspiration Twitter communities can be more positive for their users than #thinspiration groups, according to other data.

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Fitspiration or “fitspo” has more than 49 million images on the internet, many of which depict thin yet muscular women working out or posing in revealing sports clothing, researchers from Griffith University have found.

Kayla Itsines promotes her fitness brand on Instagram.

Instagram photos from Kate Hudson's account of her in activewear.

Mantras included “exercise to be fit, not skinny”, “strong is the new skinny” and “skinny is not sexy, health is”, according to lead author Laura Uhlmann.

Social media celebrity trainers such as Kayla Itsines earn millions of followers pushing the activewear-clad message, while images of celebrities including Chrissy Teigen, Rihanna, Julianne Hough, Kate Hudson and Lea Michele flood women’s accounts.

Dr Uhlmann and her team interviewed 356 women aged 17 to 30 and found such messages did not mitigate against the more negative ideal of being thin, feeling body dissatisfaction and dieting to lose weight.

“The desire for thinness in any form, is enough to elicit harmful outcomes, irrespective of any coexisting muscular body goals,” Dr Uhlmann reported in Body Image journal.

“Despite popular opinion, internalising the fit-ideal may be damaging women’s health,” she said.

Teya Foley exercising with her kids, Cadence, 5, and Ezra, 2. Picture: Jay Town

Another study in the same journal led by Dr Marika Tiggemann from Flinders University found, nonetheless, that fitspiration followers were more positive to each other than thinspiration followers even though they both focused on appearance and weight loss.

That study of 3289 English-language tweets found fitspiration followers formed a “genuine online community”.

Teya Foley, a mother-of-two and Melbourne empowerment blogger and self-love coach, said a better message than fitspiration or thinspiration was women loving their bodies.

“I want women to love their bodies and nurture them, not hate them,” she said.

“I encourage women to follow social media accounts that nurture their minds rather than

send negative messages.:

Her blog and Instagram account, called And So She Thought, or #andsoshethought, contains

positive inspiration for women rather than focusing on fatness or thinness.