💛 More representation.
💛 More nuance.
💛 More space for all body stories.
#BodyImage #RepresentationMatters #FeministMediaStudies #BeautyStandards #MediaLiteracy #CulturalIdentity #BlackWomen #HispanicWomen #BodyPositivity
Read the full article: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Posts by Jessica F. Saunders PhD
Cultural background, media we consume, and the representation we see all shape which bodies are celebrated — and which are seen as “ideal.”
We call for more body-positive, culturally specific approaches that honor how Black and Hispanic women experience beauty differently.
💫 Black participants largely admired curvier Black women celebrities, showing how different communities uplift different beauty ideals.
💫 Hispanic participants were more likely to idealize white celebrity body standards — especially the push to be “skinny.”
✨ New Research Spotlight ✨
How do celebrity bodies shape the way young Black and Hispanic women see themselves?
Our recent study in Feminist Media Studies dug into this question by analyzing how women ages 18–29 describe the celebrity bodies they admire. The findings were powerful:
💫 Black participants largely admired curvier Black women celebrities, showing how different communities uplift different beauty ideals.
💫 Hispanic participants were more likely to idealize white celebrity body standards — especially the push to be “skinny.”
Sigh indeed
Sigh
My 20 month old was “reading” the intro to human development book I teach with before bed tonight, enthralled by the pictures of other toddlers in the early childhood chapter and all I could think was “at least someone is doing the assigned reading”
In press today! We interviewed women in ED recovery on the role nature played and continues to olay on their recovery process, drawing from Piran’s theory of developmental embodiment www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Felt. This summer I had 10% of students (that I could easily identify; I’m sure there were more ) using it to generate online discussion posts each week and not even bothering to change the formatting 🫠 I started requiring direct textbook quotes w page numbers so they had to put some human effort in
I also entered grades while in labor 🥲
My newly one year old screamed when she had to sit on the scale today at her 12mo well visit. Glad to see her rejection of diet culture and BMI as a health metric has started already 😂
It has been a quiet year pub-wise (maternity leave and position switch), but I am proud to have gotten these 2024 weight stigma and body image papers into the world:
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
A meta analysis I have been working on for FOUR YEARS (and three updated database searches later) with nearly 300 studies and 400 effect sizes is finally under review. Someone please stop me before I undertake something like this again
The requests in my inbox the last few weeks from random journals have been EXCESSIVE