Shaping Online Feminist Movements: How Feminist Blogs Talk about Body Image and Beauty Standards

Public discourses from beauty industries, medicine, public health, and social media as a disciplinary power are policing women’s bodies. The message that positions the thin, predominantly-white body as the ideal body is embedded in domain beauty discourses, also emphasizing personal responsibility of keeping a strict diet and exercising. Online blogs therefore have become a popular and important space for women and feminist activists to promote and create discourses to contest the ideal beauty standards. This study examined how online bloggers debate beauty standards and body images and thus challenge mainstream beauty discourses, and also explore how bloggers transform their own negative experiences related with poor body images into broader contexts of body diversity. Using content analysis and discourse analysis, I aim to understand how individuals within an activist space develop strategies to resist mainstream messaging about beauty standards. I found that more newly and more radical feminist blog addressed the mainstream body discourses from a wider range of aspects, moving beyond the response to medicalized discourses and analyzing fatness within cultural, political, and sexuality context. I also found that online bloggers experienced a transition from reactive strategies in responding to dominant discourses, to proactive responses to resist stigma and reframe fatness. This study provided critical insights on the development of online social justice movements, uncovering the new trends of connecting collective experiences of fat stigma with political goals that could benefit full public citizenship.