This book explores how popular culture texts represent and focus on the body and how this focus exacerbates the potential for these representations to serve as a crucial social influence on audiences. Contributors examine a diverse set of bodies across the media spectrum and open the door for further research in this area.

This edited collection explores the malleability and influence of body image, focusing particularly on how media representation and popular culture’s focus on the body exacerbates the crucial social influence these representations can have on audiences’ perceptions of themselves and others. Contributors investigate the cultural context and lived experiences of individuals’ relationships with their bodies, going beyond examination of the thin, ideal body type to explore the emerging representations and portrayals of a diverse set of body types across the media spectrum, paving the way for future research on this topic. Scholars of media studies, popular culture, and health communication will find this book particularly useful.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

Sarah S. LeBlanc

Chapter 1: The Body, the Media, and Popular Culture

K. Megan Hopper, Sarah S. LeBlanc, and Sylvia Rust

Part I: Lizzo

Chapter 2: Auntie Sam Rocks the Vote! The Embodied Politics of Lizzo in the 2020 U.S. Election

Ruth Beerman

Chapter 3: Feelin’ Good as Hell?: The Influence of Cardi B. and Lizzo’s Music Videos on College-Aged Women’s Perceptions of Beauty, Sexism, and Sexualization

Amy Crumbaugh, Tamanna Tasmin, & K. Megan HopperTelevision

Part II: Social Media

Chapter 4: “This is the Kind of Influencer We Want to See!”: A Study of Body Representation among Instagram Influencers

Nora Suren

Chapter 5: Accidental Culture Jamming: Celeste Barber and the Juxtaposition Between the Real and Ideal Body

Erin Cook and Trischa Goodnow

Chapter 6: Keeping Up with the Yummy Mummies?: Examining Kim Kardashian’s Mediated Yummy Mummy Images on the reality television program Keeping Up with The Kardashians versus Instagram posts.

Suri M. Pourmodheji

Chapter 7: (Re)Presentations: Personal narratives and the posthuman body in the #MeToo movement

Amanda Hill, Ph.D.

Chapter 8: “He's dragged me here so I can understand”: Race, gender, and the performance of painted bodies in MTV’s Drag My Dad

Wanjiru Mbure and Wendy Chapman Peek

Part III: Television

Chapter 9: “There’s a lot of Inches to Love”: Expectancy Violations, Fat Identity, Weight Stigma, and Relational Turmoil in TLC’s Hot and Heavy

Mary Beth Asbury1 and Jessica M. W. Kratzer2

Chapter 10: “Body-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody”: Interrogating Black Bodies in Cable Television

Siobhan Smith-Jones and Johnny Jones

Chapter 11: The One with All the Fat Shaming: An Examination of Anti-Fat Bias on Friends

Adrienne Darrah

Chapter 12: Where Power Resides: An Analysis of Female Bodies in Game of Thrones

Juliana Russell and Sarah S. LeBlanc

Part IV: Advertising

Chapter 13: "Anti-racist x-rays?: Colour-blind racism and the 'universal' body

Beck Wise

Chapter 14: #Realbodies: Exploring the impact of women empowerment advertisements

Ashton Gerding Speno and Jennifer Lewallen Woolf

Chapter 15: Eat French Fries and Be Healthy: The Fit Body as a Means of Promoting Fast Food

Debbie Danowski

Chapter 16: Ideal-Body Media and Gay Men’s Self-Discrepancy

Irena Acic, Lindsay Roberts, and Laramie D. Taylor