“It just sends the message that you’re nothing but your body” a qualitative exploration of adolescent girls’ perceptions of sexualized images on social media

Authors

Alana Papageorgiou
Colleen Fisher
Donna Cross, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Title

Sexuality and Culture

Volume

27

Issue

2

First Page

462

Last Page

481

Publisher

Springer

School

School of Medical and Health Sciences

RAS ID

57836

Funders

Western Australian Health Promotion Foundation (Healthway) Scholarship (file number: 24235) / Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship at the University of Western Australia / National Health and Medical Research Council Research Fellowship

Grant Number

NHMRC Number : GNT1119339

Grant Link

http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1119339

Comments

Papageorgiou, A., Fisher, C., & Cross, D. (2023). “It just sends the message that you’re nothing but your body” A qualitative exploration of adolescent girls’ perceptions of sexualized images on social media. Sexuality & Culture, 27, 462-481. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-022-10022-6

Abstract

This qualitative study used in-depth interviews to explore adolescent girls’ perceptions of sexualized images they typically find when using social media. Twenty-four participants aged 14–17 years described sexualized images of females as normalized on social media. The interplay between gendered and social norms that endorsed and rewarded girls for posting sexualized images was seen to influence an expectation for girls to conform with their peers and post such images of themselves. They indicated sexualized images emphasize personal value on appearance and rejected this notion. However, participants also believed girls should be able to post sexualized images of themselves if they wanted to. There were tensions between whether girls’ sharing of sexualized images of themselves on social media would be interpreted as a display of confidence (socially acceptable) or attention seeking (socially unacceptable). Findings provide guidance for the development of health promotion programs to reduce potential harm from social media use by adolescent girls.

DOI

10.1007/s12119-022-10022-6

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.