‘Operación Feria’: a critical analysis of body discourses on Instagram

Abstract

Narrow understandings about fatness and health continue to prevail in the West. However, we have witnessed emerging trends and movements against these dominant discourses. Examples of these counter discourses are the fat acceptance and body positivity movements. Social media is a space where confrontation and discrepancies between these different discourses are common, particularly in relation to non-­normative bodies. This paper explores how Instagram users reinforce or ­challenge underlying assumptions regarding the ‘Operación Feria’ advertising campaign, which focuses on promoting physical exercise to fight obesity and fatness. A total of 1,930 comments posted on Instagram were analysed using a discourse analysis approach. Two main narratives were constructed from the data. On the one hand, there is a dominant position that challenges societal norms regarding bodies, which confronts fat-phobia and stereotypes. On the other hand, there is a reinforcement of the campaign with a discourse based on humour, victimhood and medical terms.

Keywords:

• Body
• physical activity
• fatphobia
• obesity epidemic
• instagram
• norm-criticality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Feminazi is an offensive word that makes reference to radical feminists.

2 Ofendido (masc.), ofendida (fem.), ofendidito (diminutive way) or ofendidit@ (informal neutral) are pejorative words that mean ‘offended person’ in Spanish.