Thank you for sharing: Body-positive and humour parody images increase women’s body satisfaction and predict collective action intentions via gratitude

Abstract

Exposure to idealized body imagery in social media can have a negative impact on women’s body satisfaction. Alternative types of imagery, such as body-positive and humorous parody imagery, can instead promote body satisfaction. However, it remains unclear whether body-positive and humorous parody imagery elicit specific emotions and motivates women to engage in collective action intentions to change the proliferation of unrealistic body portrayals. Across two studies, we investigated the impact of body-positive (Study 1a, N = 126) and humorous parody imagery (Study 1b, N = 126) versus body-ideal imagery on young (18–35) women’s body satisfaction, mood, emotions of anger, gratitude, and hope, and collective action intentions. Exposure to body-positive and humorous parody imagery increased body satisfaction, whereas idealized images decreased them. Importantly, imagery criticizing unrealistic body ideals (i.e., body-positive and humorous parody) increased women’s gratitude and hope. Moreover, we found an indirect effect of such type of imagery on women’s collective action intentions aimed at stopping the widespread use of idealized unrealistic imagery and promoting diverse and realistic representations of women’s bodies via gratitude. The research provides an innovative contribution to emotional and collective reactions to criticizing images against idealized bodies on social media.