News release

From: International Congress on Obesity (ICO)

Images of women on Instagram tagged with #postpartumbody do not reflect the actual population of women who have recently given birth

*Note – this is an early release from the International Congress on Obesity in Melbourne, 18-22 October. Please credit the both the congress and the journal Healthcare if using this story*

New research presented at this year’s International Congress on Obesity in Melbourne, Australia (18-22 Oct) and published in the journal Healthcare shows that most images of women on Instagram tagged with #postpartumbody (a popular forum for sharing such images) do not reflect the actual population of women who have recently given birth. The study is by Dr Megan Gow, Children's Hospital Westmead Clinical School, The University of Sydney, Westmead, Australia, and colleagues.

“These images are presenting an ‘idealised’ version of the postpartum body which may

contribute to body dissatisfaction in postpartum women who view such imagery and may already be struggling with feelings of inadequacy,” explains Dr Gow.

Extensive searching of hashtags on Instagram by the authors identified #postpartumbody, compared with other hashtags, to be a highly utilised hashtag with specific relevance to the postpartum period. When the search was conducted in October 2020 there were 1.3 million images ever uploaded to Instagram tagged with #postpartumbody. At time of manuscript submission in September 2022, this figure had increased to 2.0 million which is equivalent to approximately 1000 images uploaded to Instagram tagged with #postpartumbody daily during this time period.

Research has already established that Instagram use is associated with negative impacts on mood and body satisfaction in young women (see full paper in link below for examples). This new study 1) describes the content of images on Instagram targeting women who have recently given birth, tagged with #postpartumbody and 2) describes and compares the more popular/ trending content (‘Top’ posts) with the most ‘Recent’ images tagged with #postpartumbody. This comparison was conducted to determine features of more popular posts which may assist in establishing whether Instagram is an acceptable platform for conveying health information to postpartum women.

The authors assessed 600 images tagged with #postpartumbody (300 ‘Top’ and 300 ‘Recent’) that were systematically captured from Instagram and coded using a predefined framework. Images of women were coded for adiposity, muscularity, pose and attire. Statistical modelling was used to compare ‘Top’ and ‘Recent’ posts.

Of the 600 images, more than two thirds (409) of images were focused on women, including 256 (43%) coded as being of an individual woman, 59 (10%) coded as a before-and-after image, and 94 (16%) coded as being of a woman and a baby or child/children.  A further 41 (7%) featured more than one woman and 15 (3%) featured a pregnant woman.

Of these 409 images, 306 were able to be assessed for adiposity (body fatness), of whom most had low (37%) or average (54%) body fatness ratings and only one in 11 (9%) had a high body fatness rating. In total, 250 images were able to be assessed in relation to muscularity, of which 130 (52%) were of a woman coded with ‘little to none’ muscularity, 110 images (44%) were of women coded with ‘visible definition’ and 10 images (4%) were of women coded with a ‘high level of definition’. The majority of the 59 images classified as ‘before-and-after’ images were of women who had experienced a reduction in weight (54%).

Most women (52%) were posing in a non-specific manner, 5% were posing to accentuate a postpartum body feature and 40% were wearing fitness attire. Compared with ‘Recent’, ‘Top’ posts were less likely to be text-focused, photos of food or linked to a product/program. This suggests that women may be more interested in viewing images of other women on Instagram, rather than receiving health information. However, more research is required to determine why women use social media platforms such as Instagram.

The authors say: “Women with lower body fat, and in fitness attire, are more likely to post images of themselves on Instagram than women of higher adiposity…viewing such imagery may worsen body satisfaction at this already vulnerable life stage…given that Instagram is highly accessed by women during the postpartum period, the inclusion of health information may be necessary to interrupt the potentially harmful content observed in our study.”

They add: “This may include information targeting diet, exercise, infant feeding and psychological wellbeing to optimise postpartum health.”.