Understanding Attitudes toward Weight and Health Equity on Instagram

Project Year: 2020
Role: Lead Researcher
Methods: Digital Ethnography, Qualitative Interviews, Media Analysis, Qualitative Discourse Analysis
Company: UCLA

Problem

A sub-set of young, professional dietitians recognize the harmful consequences of dieting and now promote anti-diet and weight-inclusive approaches to health and nutrition. Many do so from a social-justice perspective in order to promote inclusive, anti-racist understandings of bodies and health.

Yet, many Black members of the fat community argue that young, white promoters of this paradigm continue to promote (and sell) practices that perpetuate racist, and particularly anti-Black, perceptions of health and bodies on digital platforms like Instagram.

Methods

I conducted a 4-week digital ethnography of dietitians on Instagram in 2020. I collected over 100 public posts, videos, and comment threads and performed emergent coding to identify instances where anti-Black racism was being perpetuated through language.

Findings

The research showed that dietitians who positioned themselves as progressive providers still perpetuated anti-fat bias and anti-Black racism through their language use. By framing themselves as social justice-oriented experts, they uplifted whiteness and thinness as ideals while demonizing fat, Black clients as in need of reform. They were often resistant to acknowledging this because their self-image as anti-racist providers was incongruent with the indirect, covert forms of racism that they perpetuated through their language.

Impact & Deliverables

I presented the findings from this research in a peer-reviewed article on the premiere public anthropology publication, Anthropology News, which has a readership of over 25,000 subscribers.

My work was shared on Twitter and Facebook by prominent experts with over 20,000 followers each within fat liberation and anti-diet communities.

I also wrote a book review of the recent publication Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia (Sabrina Strings, NYU Press, 2019) for UCLA’s Center for the Study of Women.