“I Love My Body; I Love It All” : Body Positivity Messages in Youth-Oriented Television Series

ABSTRACT

Traditionally, content analyses of body image (BI) messages in youth-oriented series have focused on negative messages. Thus, studies have not addressed the potential for youth-oriented series to promote positive BI (PBI). Using the main principles of the General Learning Model, this study fills this gap in the literature through a content analysis of the PBI messages in six youth-oriented television series. A total of 126 characters (52% male, 48% female) and 3,151 scenes across 65 episodes were coded. We further paid attention to the co-occurrence between PBI and negative BI (NBI) messages, and to who promoted PBI messages (i.e., character gender and body size). The results indicate that a PBI message occurred in a youth-oriented television series twice per episode. Also, NBI and PBI messages co-occurred. This underlines the complexity of the television landscape and implies that scholars should focus on both NBI and PBI, instead of exclusively examining NBI messages and their impact on adolescents’ BI. Further, the distribution of PBI messages did not vary by character gender. Lastly, characters with below-average body sizes were more likely to convey PBI messages.

Acknowledgments

We want to thank Sarah Devos of the KU Leuven School for Mass Communication Research for her attentive verification of the final results.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ The pilot survey study and content analysis are part of the Positive Body & Sex Project, which explored the positive role of entertainment media in adolescents’ constructions of BI and sexuality. For additional information, please contact the first author of this study.

² The analytical dataset together with the outputs of the results can be found via OSF: https://osf.io/j3uwq/.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Bijzonder Onderzoeksfonds under grant number Special Research Fund [C14/18/017].

Notes on contributors

Chelly Maes

Chelly Maes is a doctoral student at the Leuven School for Mass Communication Research (KU Leuven) under supervision of Professor Laura Vandenbosch. Her PhD project focuses on the role of entertainment fiction as a positive socialization agent for adolescents’ sexuality and body image. The aim of her PhD project is threefold. The first aim is to conceptualize and measure a positive body image and sexuality among adolescents. The second aim is to explore how positive body- and sexuality components are portrayed in youth-oriented television shows. The third aim is to explore the impact of prosocial content with regards to appearance and sexuality in popular media on adolescent’s body image and sexuality. A multimethod approach is used to address these aims. Chelly already presented her research at different (inter)national conferences such as Etmaal van de Communicatiewetenschapp and the 2019 and 2021 International Communication Association Conference (ICA). She is a member of the Netherlands-Flanders Communication Association (NeFCA).

Laura Vandenbosch

Laura Vandenbosch an assistant professor at the School for Mass Communication Research (BOF-ZAP research professorship grant). The relationship between media and well-being is the core subject of her research, leading to international publications in several fields including developmental psychology, sexology, body image, social relationships and communication theory. In 2015 she was elected as the secretary of the Children, Adolescents and Media Division of the International Communication Association (2015-2018). Laura is currently also an editorial board member of ISI-ranked journals Human Communication Research, Journal of Children and Media, and Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research. Currently, she is involved in several (international) research projects aimed to study how media may affect well-being by focusing on factors that have not been understood well, such as the role of social relationships, cultural background, sexualization, media literacy and malleability beliefs. Part of these projects are embedded within the international network she has built throughout the years by spending periods abroad at, for instance, the U of Michigan, the U of Toronto and the U of Vienna. Her work has led to several awards, such as the Early Career Scholar Award, Top Paper, Top Article and Top Dissertation Awards from the Children, Adolescents and Media (CAM) Division of the International Communication Association (2013-2020) and the Research Council Award in the Humanities (Prijs Onderzoeksraad, 2016). In 2019, she received an ERC starting grant for the project “Malleability in mediated ideals: A paradigm to understand effects of contemporary media in adolescents’ well-being. ”