Affect as Community Connectedness: Re-Framing Weight-Related Stigma and Disordered Eating Online

Abstract

This article examines how affect, as community connectedness, is strategized by an influencer with her audiences when re-framing weight-related stigma and disordered eating online. An analysis of plus-size model Tess Holliday's Instagram posts (n = 212) identifies four main frames: (1) disclosing experiences of body-shaming/blaming/stigmatization as “our pain,” (2) collaborating with fellow influencers in de-stigmatizing disordered eating among (fat) women, (3) engaging audiences in validating body diversity, and (4) defending their community against hate comments. The analysis foregrounds the action of emotion when exploring affective community-building strategies and project stigma in a context depicted as “authentic” and “intimate.” The article concludes by noting some limitations with influencer strategies and this study before offering suggestions for future research.

Keywords

affect community connectedness disordered eating fat influencer (re)framing

Introduction

There is growing scholarship on affect or “the action of emotion” (Fraser et al., 2010), notably how public expression of sentiments is performative on the social stage (e.g., Papacharissi, 2015). The action of emotion in securing collectivities has been explored with reference to diverse groups and issues, ranging from asylum seekers and singlehood to the cultural politics of hatred and cruelty (Ahmed, 2014 [2004]; Kolehmainem et al., 2022; Moscowitz, 2018). However, there is limited communications scholarship on affect in the context of online responses to “obesity discourse” (Evans et al., 2008) or “fat frames” (Kwan & Graves, 2013), weight-related stigma, and disordered eating. This article aims to redress that lacuna at a time when “excess” weight/fatness continues to be pathologized as “obesity” (World Health Organization [WHO], 2021) and antithetical to hegemonic Western cultural beauty ideals.

With such matters in mind, this article examines how affect, as community connectedness (Billard, 2022), is strategized by an influencer with her audiences when negotiating the emotional vicissitudes of fat female embodiment online. In so doing, we utilize theorizations of affect as part of a framing analysis of an influencer's ostensibly authentic and intimate conveyance of private troubles as public issues. Empirically, we draw from Instagram posts that were published by Tess Holliday, a prominent “body positivity” advocate within “the Fatosphere” (i.e., digital media that contest fat-shaming) (Lupton, 2017, p. 122). Instagram is a popular social media platform for discussing health, with our article contributing to recent research exploring weight-related issues therein (e.g., Ross Arguedas, 2022; Wellman, 2022). Questions guiding our study included: how is the emotionality of publicly circulating texts implicated in the re-framing of fat female embodiment? And, what does the articulation of (negative) affect accomplish in the context of digitally mediated bodies and collectivities?

This article is divided into five main sections. First, we outline media framings of fatness as “fatal” and “frightful” (Kwan & Graves, 2013), and how influencers and marginalized groups reframe their shared experiences through the “doing of affect” (Moscowitz, 2018, p. 91, emphasis in original). Second, we describe the research context, including Holliday's status as a plus size model and social media influencer. Third, we delineate the method of framing analysis. Fourth, we analyze four main frames qua rhetorical strategies surrounding Holliday's controversial announcement of being anorexic: (1) disclosing experiences of body-shaming/blaming/stigmatization as “our pain,” (2) collaborating with fellow influencers in de-stigmatizing disordered eating among (fat) women, (3) engaging audiences in validating body diversity, and (4) defending their community against hate comments. Fifth, we discuss our observations with reference to literature on the cultural politics of emotion, influencer practices, stigma, social studies of weight/fatness, disordered eating, and visceral publics. Some limitations with influencer strategies that “fetishize the wound” (Ahmed, 2014) and the limitations of this study are also highlighted. We finish with some suggestions for future research amidst broader discourses that frame fat (female, feminizing) embodiment as deviant, disabling, and deadly.

Framing Fatness as “Fatal” and “Frightful”: From Mediated harms to Affective Community

It would be anthropologically inaccurate to claim that (women's) fatness is universally derided (Popenoe, 2004). However, weight-related stigma—incorporating negative attitudes, stereotypes, discrimination, and oppression—has been defined as a “truly global/ized” and “emotionally damaging” phenomenon (Hackman et al., 2016, pp. 58–59, emphasis added). Whilst thinness is stigmatized in certain contexts, fatness has been framed as the archetypal “physical stigma” (Goffman, 1968) in nations such as the United States. The emotional vicissitudes of discredited fatness need to be placed within their broader social and communicative contexts. This is because the action of emotion or the capacity to be affected and affect others are not personal private matters but rather socially embedded and collective processes comprising imaginings and responses to bodies within and between public spaces (Ahmed, 2014). For Ahmed and others (e.g., Fraser et al., 2010), the cultural politics of emotion refers to what emotions do, the worlds that they make, and the designation of (il)legitimate lives. Emotions warrant scrutiny given their capacity to co-constitute, move, and secure groups and all that entails; for instance, alignment with or distancing from others, negotiating identities, reproducing inequalities.

Insofar as “the production and circulation” of “feelings” have a history (Ahmed, 2014, p. 11), it is worth recognizing that disdain toward fatness is not new in contemporary Western culture (Stearns, 2002). The pathologization of fatness and its racialization emerged in a context of colonialism, the civilizing process, and denigration of “natives” in the nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries (Farrell, 2011). However, matters have intensified in recent decades. Indeed, fatness or “excess” weight, medicalized as an obesity epidemic, has been framed as a global public health crisis (WHO, 2021). Media are embroiled in the enterprising act of socially constructing weight/fatness as a correctible and/or preventable problem. Boero (2012), for instance, explains how images of obesity in American mainstream media are often caustic, notably via sensationalist portrayals of “killer fat” (on comparable responses elsewhere, see Monaghan et al., 2022). Media often amplify problem frames that also reinforce gendered concerns and harmful stereotypes (Shugart, 2011), despite burgeoning scholarship revealing, for example, flaws in the weight centered health paradigm (WCHP) and the availability of weight-neutral or inclusive approaches to health, like Health At Every Size® (HAES®) (O’Hara & Taylor, 2018; Wellman, 2022). “Obesity discourse” (Evans et al., 2008), intersecting with the fashion-beauty complex, frames fatness as fatal and frightful (Kwan & Graves, 2013). Within medicalized culture, though, health often operates as a master frame. For instance, news coverage post-2020 articulated a “dual crisis obesity/COVID-19 frame” (Monaghan et al., 2022) wherein fatness elevated the risks of hospitalization and death from the novel coronavirus (Pausé et al., 2021). Such messaging has further compounded those “pedagogies of disgust” critiqued by Lupton (2015), with reference to Australian mass mediated public health anti-obesity campaigns.

In short, appeals to health, beauty, and normality via the media promote globally circulating stereotypes about weight loss and “fatties” (Cooper, 2007) who are routinely vilified as slothful, ignorant, ugly, unhealthy, and costly. In Ahmed's (2014) sense, such signs “stick” to bodies (especially those already disadvantaged by class, gender, ethnicity, age, etc.) and even acquire a fetish quality. A review of media analyses suggests that negative stereotyping strengthens beliefs of fatness as self-inflicted and encourages public discourse about moralizing weight and blame (Monaghan et al., 2019). Scholars have been attentive to such processes for some time, drawing from classic sociological literature on “spoiled identity” (Goffman, 1968 [1963]). That is, a discrediting social process whereby a discrepancy emerges between “virtual identity” (what somebody in a given social category is expected to be) and “actual identity” (what that person is), resulting in the treatment of the stigmatized as tainted or inferior. Stigmatization, as similarly observed in research on affective intensities (Kolehmainem et al., 2022), also reproduces inequality; including misrecognizing (health) problems as the product of poor choices rather than inequitable social structures, hierarchies and power relations.

Furthermore, mounting research indicates strong links between stigmatizing obesity discourse and disordered eating, including continual dieting and forms of “nervosa” (anorexia, bulimia, orthorexia) (Evans et al., 2008; O’Hara & Taylor, 2018; Ross Arguedas, 2022). Sociologically, “disordered eating” is a broadened referent that is not limited to medical diagnoses but rather captures “different forms of control” surrounding diet, the body, and health (Evans et al., 2008, p. 3). Disordered eating is complex, but it may, in part, be conceptualized as a product of mass mediated, middle-class, “body pedagogies” that “tend to frame our thinking about our bodies and health” by constantly instructing us that overweight/obesity/fatness are “bad things” (p. 6). As discussed in critical weight and fat studies, and a long tradition of feminist scholarship, these pedagogies objectify/subjugate female bodies that are disparaged for their “unruly” appetites and occupying “too much space” (Lupton, 2018).

Social media may exacerbate such harms, highlighting the need for communications scholars to apply theorizations of affect to the “fat field” (Saguy, 2013). Studies reveal derogatory sentiments and body-shaming on Twitter (Chou et al., 2014), whilst influencer culture more generally has been critiqued for reinforcing heteronormative femininity and commodifying visibility (Marwick, 2015). Self-presentation on Instagram, for example, has been characterized as the practices of the “Instafamous” who tend to be “conventionally good-looking … and emulate the tropes and symbols of traditional celebrity culture” (p. 139). Social media platforms can impose limitations on content creation whilst simultaneously encouraging self-scrutiny and engagement driven by consumption within an atmosphere of hostile surveillance (Banet-Weiser, 2012). On the other hand, social media may be experienced as empowering and foster an affective sense of belonging (Kim, 2023). Indeed, social media may enable people negatively affected by obesity discourse and body pedagogies to reframe fatness, a case of resistance or what has also been termed “project stigma” (Scambler, 2018, p. 142). Re-framing discredited obesity as creditable fatness is seen online with, for example, #bodypositivity/#bodyposi/#beautybeyondsize and other campaigns within the Fatosphere (Lupton, 2017).

To be sure, these are contested projects. However, research exploring influencers’ communications identifies the doing of “authenticity” and “intimacy” as key factors contributing to online community-building and (positive) visibility (e.g., Abidin, 2018; Kim, 2023). Although not central in Ahmed's (2014) text, such considerations are germane and are hinted at in her work when explaining “the ‘withness’ of intimacy” entails “the process of being affected by others” (p. 160), whilst charges of “inauthenticity” (e.g., in relation to grief for a public figure) imply the derogation of femininity and being “taken in” (p. 18). For Abidin (2018, p. 91), authenticity is conceptualized as a “performative ecology and parasocial strategy.” Here influencers create content that appears credible, fostering a sense of perceived interconnectedness or feelings of closeness and emotional identification among “like-minded” followers. Premised on the public articulation of personal voice, these practices help convey “disclosive intimacies”—influencers share and relate certain revelations of their everyday life to their followers—and “reciprocal intimacies”—influencers express acknowledgement and appreciation of followers (Abidin, 2015). Enacting “intimacy” and “authenticity” in influencer culture potentially fosters feelings of belonging and validation among subjugated groups by invoking shared struggles that are rendered visible, knowable, and possibly surmountable. Recent studies are illustrative. For instance, while Kim (2023) researched Asian American women negotiating Western beauty ideals on YouTube, Ross Arguedas (2022) explored an Instagram community dedicated to recovery from “orthorexia nervosa” (an obsession with only eating “healthy” food).

In another study, the analysis of anxiety vlogs suggests that influencer content, specifically the portrayal of “emotional vulnerability,” can strengthen authenticity and cultivate a sense of intimacy within the community (Berryman & Kavka, 2018, p. 85). This phenomenon has been described as a “performative validation of real feelings” (p. 92). It is the performance of distress, isolation, and related feelings that constitute an online “intimate public” (p. 87), fostering “connectedness with and among their viewers precisely through the emotional production of discomfort, unease and distress” (p. 90). Elsewhere, Morrison (2011) characterizes “the intimate public of personal mommy blogging” as a space where “direct emotional reciprocity among its participants create[ed] strong bonds of trust and support” (p. 37). Bloggers often described these connections as meaningful friendships within their community. In short, an online affective community is a network of individuals who are (dis)connected through their expression of common emotional experiences and values. Affective communities often emerge in response to marginalization, subordination, or oppression, providing space for the public production and circulation of intense feelings and experiences (Billard, 2022; Kim, 2023).

To be clear, then, “community connectedness” is not merely a product of group membership; it entails an “affective sense of community” (Billard, 2022, p. 340). Comprising the declaration/recognition of emotions that bring the group into existence as a “felt community” (Ahmed, 2014, p. 101), such action befuddles classical sociological theorizing on mechanical and organic solidarity that are derived, respectively, from physical co-presence in small traditional communities and the advancing division of labor in large complex societies. Rather, digital communication networks potentially integrate and constitute participants by fostering a feeling of belonging to a group that “shares a common identity” (p. 337). Such virtual connectedness may be accomplished in various ways. Wellman (2022), for instance, highlights the domestication of the HAES® movement on Instagram, with influencers employing rhetorical strategies to promote a weight-neutral approach to health. In Wellman's study, influencers used personal anecdotes to enhance their credibility, authenticity, and promote social justice and community validation. These findings suggest that influencers’ performance of authenticity and intimacy advance the visibility of affective communities, particularly among people affected by obesity discourse. Yet, more needs to be learnt with reference to the action of emotion and the contestation of fat shame and blame, processes that may be especially germane for women who disproportionately suffer from weight bias (Fikkan & Rothblum, 2012). Indeed, on the latter point, note recent communications research in the COVID-19 era on how fat women's bodies have been subjected online to misogynistic attacks and politicized cruelty (Monaghan, 2021). The intersectional character of such harms, which might otherwise be eclipsed by an analysis centering more favorably positioned fat bodies, is a theme to which we return in the conclusion.

The Research Context

Holliday is an American plus-size model and vlogger who started the #effyourbeautystandards campaign on Instagram in 2013. The campaign contests pathologizing frames constructed by the fashion-beauty complex and it encourages women to accept their bodies (see Otis, 2020). In 2018, Holliday was the first plus-size woman featured on the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine. The cover, whilst welcomed and “liked” by some audiences (see Figure 1), was also criticized for allegedly glamorizing fatness amid an “ongoing obesity crisis” (Morgan, 2018).

Figure 1.

An image of Cosmopolitan's October 2018 cover and announcement, posted on Instagram by Tess Holliday on August 29, 2018.

Holliday, as an influencer, belongs to a group of “people who have established credibility with large social media audiences because of their knowledge and expertise in particular topics, and thereby exert a significant influence on their followers’ decisions” (Ki & Kim, 2019, p. 905). According to a large industry survey from Linqia (2021), (micro) influencers with at least 10,000 Instagram followers typically receive an average of 1,261 likes per post. Holliday's Instagram posts have generated high engagement, with many thousands of likes from her 2.5 million followers (at the time of data collection in September 2022).

On May 4, 2021, Holliday announced on social media that she was seeking treatment for anorexia, in the hope of challenging “the idea that only very underweight people” suffer from this condition (cited by Elan, 2021). Whilst “eating disorder campaigners” praised Holliday for challenging misconceptions about anorexia (Elan, 2021), others accused her of contradicting herself when ostensibly promoting body positivity, and reigniting fatphobia amid broader public discussions of obesity, health, and COVID-19 vaccine eligibility (Thompson, 2021). This sparked a controversial discussion on Holliday's Instagram page, which we analyzed.

Method

Media provide a crucial site for contestation and alignment between social actors who present their framing of controversial issues when seeking to gain currency in public discourse. Goffman (1974, p. 21) defined “framing” as a “schemata of interpretation,” enabling social actors to “locate, perceive, identify and label” occurrences or life experiences. Entman (1993, p. 51) advanced this definition by specifying that the process of framing entails selection, emphasis, and elaboration “in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or a treatment recommendation for the item described.” By presenting sociopolitical issues within selective frames, claims-makers seek to legitimate—simultaneously limit the range of—what are understood to be the foundational causes and potential consequences of a putative social problem alongside possible remedies. As explained within analyses of competing constructions of fatness (e.g., a biomedical problem versus one related to injustice), it is through framing that social actors seek resonance with their audiences and possibly motivate collective action (Kwan & Graves, 2013).

After selecting the case, we conducted a framing analysis of Holliday's Instagram posts related to her anorexia announcement. Using keywords and phrases including anorexia, diet, body, disordered eating, fat, health, obesity, shaming, stigma, and weight, we collected 212 messages posted between February 1 and July 31, 2021, 3 months before and after Holliday's announcement. These posts received between 25,000 and 348,000 likes and averaged 700 comments. Whilst acknowledging classic framing analyses of media images/visual communication, our article prioritizes written posts and video transcripts. The study also included comments from followers, fellow influencers, and hateful remarks that provided further impetus for project stigma. Holliday engaged with and (re)shared these posts, some of which are cited in the results section of our article for illustrative purposes. Exigencies of space prevent us from presenting a systematic analysis of readers’ comments.

Our analysis involved reconstructing “frame packages” by identifying the frames used in a series of texts (Van Gorp, 2016). Each package comprises framing and reasoning devices and the central frame. Framing devices consist of implicit and explicit reasoning connected to a putative problem, including description, definition, causal interpretation, responsibility, solution, and moral evaluation, as well as lexical choices that may activate the frame for audiences. The central frame is the organizing theme that reinforces the narrative meaning. Table 1 presents the framing devices and our explanations. Reconstructing frame packages involves a qualitative, systematic, open-coding approach, using constant comparison to locate frames in the texts. The frame matrix is considered complete when no additional frames are detected.

Table 1.

Devices of the Framing Analysis.

Framing device	Explanation of framing device
Problem description/definition	Portrayals of weight/fatness/obesity/disordered eating and those affected (e.g., ‘headless fatties’; thin women are beautiful); description of health and weight-related claims (e.g., obesity is unhealthy; discrimination causing anorexia and/or fatness)
Causal interpretation and claim	Explaining/responding to weight and related claims (e.g., sedentary lifestyles, poverty, repeated dieting); sources/perspectives used in justifying/interpreting the definition (e.g., governmental reports, medical/health professionals’ claims, or fat individuals’ experiences)
Treatment recommendation/Responsibility and solutions	Proposing “solutions” to weight-related concerns (e.g., emphasizing lifestyles or personal behaviors versus biological and environmental factors, re-framing the problem as a social injustice that needs to be confronted and changed)
Moral evaluation	Social, cultural resonance, moral reasoning, and judgment of weight (e.g., fat-shaming); moral, cultural, aesthetic, biomedical and emotional basis for weight-related claims (e.g., thinness idolization, individual and social responsibility, fatness as antithesis of fitness and healthiness)
Lexical choices	Key, recurring phrases within a text (e.g., obesity epidemic is costly; fat-shaming is traumatic, triggering, painful)

Results

Figure 2 is a quote from Holliday, posted the day after her anorexia announcement. It captures the crux of her position, advanced via various frames. Our analysis identified four main frames, summarized in Table 2. Although we analyzed these frames separately, in practice they were often combined for rhetorical effect: Holliday, when addressing her audience, basically argued that fat women deserve respect and compassion. Rather than focusing on the frames’ consistency or objectivity, we consider what these communications “do” (the worlds and bodies they make) by analyzing affect as a productive cultural practice (Ahmed, 2014).

Figure 2.

A quote Tess Holliday posted on Instagram on May 5, 2021.

Table 2.

Frames in Tess Holliday's Instagram Posts.

Frame	Problem description /definition	Causal interpretation and claim	Treatment recommendation/Responsibility and solutions	Moral evaluation	Lexical choices
Disclosing experiences of fat-shaming/blaming/stigmatization as “our pain”	Plus-size people suffer in everyday life from body-shaming comments and actions, derogative jokes, and media stereotypes.	Body stereotyping enacts weight stigma and inflicts trauma.	(Positive) Media representation can help challenge stigmatization and improve understanding of weight.	Fat people's rights should be respected.	“When someone tries to tell me that fat girls don’t get laid or that no one will ever f*** me.” “Don’t make people feel bad because they can’t lose weight. It DOES NO GOOD.”
Collaborating with fellow influencers in de-stigmatizing disordered eating among (fat) women	Diet culture and disordered eating are perpetuated by equating weight loss with health and placing values and worth on body size. Admissions from influential people indicate that disordered eating can affect anyone, though dominant beauty standards disproportionately impact (fat) women.	Thinness idolization harms mental and physical health. Further, negative media representation and stigmatization marginalize fat women.	De-stigmatizing fat and anorexia in media will encourage women to accept their bodies.	Society should stop placing moral value on arbitrary social constructs of an “ideal” weight.	“When you equate weight loss with health and place value and worth on someone's size, you are basically saying that we are more valuable now because we are smaller.” “I’m anorexic and in recovery. I’m not ashamed to say it out loud anymore.”
Engaging audiences in validating body diversity	In response to a fatphobic society, Holliday and followers create an online size-acceptance community that also supports those battling with disordered eating.	Collectively challenging weight stigma affirms alternative perspectives.	Followers’ collaboration and validation enable Holliday to foreground diverse bodies and promote size-acceptance, albeit public opinion is divided.	The Instagram community empowers Holliday to challenge fat as “fatal” and “frightful” frames; this also makes her/followers susceptible to criticism.	“The hate has been overwhelming, but the messages from those of you that felt seen, validated and loved far outweigh the critics…. Just remember that having an ED isn’t shameful and you deserve respect and love regardless of where you’re at in your journey with your body.” “I understand that people look at me and I don’t fit what we have seen presented as, you know, the diagnosis for anorexia. But then, for me, that tells me that there's a larger problem which I’ve been actually saying for years is that we have a lack of diversity and representation in the world.”
Defending their community against hate comments	Weight-based health norms facilitate health stereotypes and (hostile) surveillance.	People wrongly assume weight is under personal control.	“Health” should not be used as a reason to shame fat people and legitimate diet culture.	It is wrong to make assumptions about people's health based on their size/weight.	“To everyone that keeps saying ‘you’re looking healthy lately’ or ‘You are losing weight, keep it up!’ Stop. Don’t. Comment. On. My. Weight. Or. Perceived. Health. Keep. It. To. Yourself.” “You cannot determine someone's health based on their weight.”

The first frame emphasized fat women's experiences of body-shaming/blaming/stigmatization as “our pain.” As a social process, physical stigma discredits non-normative bodies, prompting feelings of inadequacy and, increasingly in neoliberal regimes, (self-)blame (Scambler, 2018). Here Holliday explicitly described “our pain,” that is, fat women suffering in everyday life from abrasive comments or actions that include derogative jokes and sizeist stereotypes in media. She framed such “othering” practices as violating fat people's rights and advocated that (positive) media representation of their experiences can help challenge stigmatization and improve understanding of weight-related problems. Holliday shared stigmatizing experiences from her own life, stating “society can be very judgmental and verbally abusive toward fat people including children.” In one post, Holliday recalled as a fat child being laughed off stage at a dancing contest. In another, she disclosed being told that no one would find her sexually attractive, “fat girls don’t get laid.” Presenting “anecdotal narratives” is also a strategy evidenced among other Instagram influencers, as reported in Wellman's (2022) research on the domestication of HAES® and the doing of authenticity and credibility.

Underscoring “our pain,” Holliday not only described her own troubles from girlhood onwards but also provided space for her followers to publicly express their own distress. As per Holliday's revelations, their narratives foregrounded instances where they were judged as lazy, self-indulgent, unhealthy, and incompetent in a culture that routinely equates “the physical stigma” of obesity with “stigmas of character” (Goffman, 1968). One such follower shared: “I tried everything, diets, exercise, but I was always bigger than the other girls and got teased every day by classmates in grade school. I wanted to die every day.” Another, after confessing “I hate looking at myself in the mirror,” attributed her shame to the cruelty of “trolls” who lack human compassion (likely wish fat people dead, as also observed in Monaghan's, 2021, analysis of a right-wing news media website and readers’ misogynistic comments on this topic):

I am absolutely ashamed that some of these people are humans! The negativity and hatred they spew…. to the trolls on here, do you think every person that is overweight should hide and want to die? 90% of people that lose all the weight gain it back. It is a hard thing to do whether you think so or not. So should we all just crawl in a hole and die so we aren’t ‘promoting’ obesity?

Influencers reference other notable personalities/figures when seeking to connect with their audiences through authenticating shared experiences (Kim, 2023). This community-building strategy is captured in the second frame, collaborating with fellow influencers in de-stigmatizing disordered eating among (fat) women. Through “shoutouts” and (re)sharing posts on disordered eating, Holliday furthered community connectedness and project stigma by aligning with influencers such as: Gemma Oaten (a celebrity/actress recovering from anorexia), Anna Sweeney @dietitiananna (a registered dietitian nutritionist and anti-diet, disordered eating specialist), and Luanda Yasmin (an actress/YouTuber who supports size acceptance). Alongside these influencers, Holliday argued that conflating weight loss with health and placing values and moral worth on body size perpetuate the harms of “thinness idolization” and “diet culture” (see also Ross Arguedas, 2022). Here Holliday shared posts such as the following from Gemma Oaten. In so doing, Holliday responded to ostensibly well-meaning people who praise (police) women's bodies, that is, those who enact covert fat oppression and trigger potentially fatal anorexia:

Even though I’ve been in recovery (from anorexia) and nearly died four times, I’ll stand on the red carpet and photographers will say ‘oh Gemma you’ve lost weight, you must keep at that.’ It boggles the mind. It's important we get the message out that someone can look good without weight loss.

Endeavoring to de-stigmatize disordered eating among fat women, Holliday acknowledged that people did not regard her as fitting “what we have seen presented as the diagnosis for anorexia.” She quoted dietitian Anna Sweeney, who described symptoms of “atypical anorexia nervosa” while expressing support for the broader community: “Thank you so much @tessholliday for your vulnerability and for sharing your journey! @dietitiannana is a platform for ALL human beings experiencing eating disorder!” Holliday also reshared posts such as the following, from Luanda Yasmin, which might be read as an implicit response to online “pro-ana communities” that seek to disqualify fat women from authentically claiming an anorexic identity (the derogation of the so-called wannarexic) (Boero & Pascoe, 2012):

People who are saying that Tess Holliday can’t be anorexic because she's fat, and people who are saying that she can’t be body positive whilst also dealing with body image issues are absolutely missing the point. You can advocate for the better treatment of marginalized people whilst still dealing with the insecurities that come with being marginalized. Humans discriminate but eating disorders do not.

Influencers, as observed in other research on counter-hegemonic beauty practices, encourage audiences to co-produce content thereby fostering community engagement and intimacy (Kim, 2023). This brings us to the third frame, engaging audiences in validating body diversity. Here Holliday depicted social media as a double-edged sword. She claimed that Instagram, whilst attracting criticism, helped her in-group attain visibility and community support for asserting diverse body ideals. Figure 3 presents one such quote. In her words: “the messages from those of you that felt seen, validated and loved far outweigh the critics.” She constantly acknowledged that the “Instagram community” enabled her and her “fat folks” to “make and have room for our complex truths,” exposing the lack of diverse body ideals in media representation and the harmfulness of equating slimness with health and beauty.

Figure 3.

A quote Tess Holliday posted on Instagram on May 6, 2021.

As a counterfoil to the “aesthetic frame” wherein fatness is “frightful,” Holliday and many of her (fat) followers posted words and images (selfies) celebrating their bodies. As observed in a different context (media analysis of films), “visual intimacy” has affective significance insofar as it also “invites the viewer to reflect on how indifference and cruelty stymie cultural values of compassion and empathy, to confront ways in which cruelty is expressed, and to solicit affective responses from viewers” (Moscowitz, 2018, p. 92). Tacitly acknowledging such matters, Holliday proclaimed that her and her followers’ uneasiness at disclosing personal information and images would be “worth it” if their actions resonated with (touched, moved) others, particularly those who felt vulnerable. Consequently, hundreds of thousands of Holliday's followers praised her as “beautiful,” “courageous,” and “inspirational.” For example, intimating the possibility of presenting/experiencing fat female bodies as “happy objects” (Ahmed, 2014, p. 218), which generate good feeling, one follower wrote:

@tessholliday I know you will never read this as you have thousands of messages but I just want you to know that you are my hero. I read your interview and saw your pictures and you looked absolutely stunning!! I hope one day I will have an ounce of your confidence and I’m just so happy that there are people like you in this world that [are] out there!! Xx

In the fourth frame, Holliday prioritized publicly defending their community against hate comments. Here Holliday countered insults directed at “folks like me,” though such an identification also erased intersecting differences/disadvantages (e.g., in terms of status, wealth, ethnicity, sexuality, abilities). Detractors vilified Holliday for normalizing fatness and allegedly profiting from deceptive practices that could harm young women who are “taken in” (Ahmed, 2014, p. 18). They argued that promoting body acceptance perpetuates the health risks associated with obesity, an ostensible “concern” belied by a misogynistic emphasis on the (un)attractiveness of (fat) women's bodies. For instance, haters castigated Holliday as such: “No one would call this beautiful or healthy! Your body (is) dysmorphic w(ith) disordered eating … You’ve made millions by deceiving young women with health at any size.” “People should be encouraged to strive for a better body rather than accepting obesity and health problems.” Many comments contained insults such as “whale,” “trash,” and “disgusting,” whilst others framed fatness as self-inflicted and attributable to ignorance. Such designations, which, in Ahmed's sense, are “sticky,” circulate within a broader affective economy of hate wherein groups express fears towards subordinated others (e.g., migrants who “threaten” material interests, the purity of established bodies, and the white nation). Holliday declared sizeist comments perpetuated trauma and a narrow understanding of an attractive, healthy body. Her response, below, highlights how affect is entangled with social relations and the genesis of harm between bodies and collectivities:

For folks like me that are trying to reframe our relationships with our bodies & heal, hearing comments about weight is triggering as hell. It sets us back in our progress — and when people working on themselves see you commenting to me that way, it HURTS THEM, not just me. I can take it (I shouldn’t have to, but I can) but they didn’t ask for that trauma, ok? If you can’t tell someone they look nice without making it about their size, then baby, please don’t say nothing at all.

Akin to HAES® influencers in Wellman's (2022) research, Holliday also rejected sizeist assumptions: “There are people that are perfectly healthy that are big. There are skinny tiny people they have diabetes and high cholesterol. It's not okay to assume.” Rather than validating intentional weight-loss, Holliday discussed making “peace” with one's weight whilst shifting the focus of change onto the “minds” of those who publicly scrutinize women's flesh. Furthermore, Holliday framed health/weight as subject to individual understandings and beliefs whilst emphasizing that society should not use health as a justification for body shaming. Consider one final excerpt. Here Holliday sought to challenge haters whilst reproducing biomedical labels and individualizing modes of governmentality—the idea people decide on their health status, even though other people could affect them for good or ill. Accordingly, the limitations of such identity work are also brought to view, a point we would underscore given the impact of social structures on health (Scambler, 2018) and “affective economies” that frame many “figures of hate” as a “common threat” (Ahmed, 2014, p. 15):

When people look at larger-bodied individuals, they see us as less than, and we’re not less than. Health is not a moral compass. Health is everyone's personal decision. I think that should be respected. There are a lot of reasons people are over or underweight. We’re all at different places in our journey…. For every person for whom eating, moving, and the concept of health was punitive and hell, rather than self-care and self-advocacy it should have been…. If you care about our health, care about our mental health too, because that directly impacts our physical bodies and relationship with it.

Discussion

“Obesity stigma” has been described as a “globalizing health challenge” (Brewis et al., 2018) that may be especially corrosive for young women negotiating middle-class body pedagogies (Evans et al., 2008). Furthermore, quantitative data suggest that weight discrimination, besides negatively affecting mental health, may shorten life expectancy (Sutin et al., 2015). Such matters potentially rouse intense feelings, though more needs to be learnt with reference to the actions of those who are affected and consequently mobilize “large audiences.” Indeed, what worlds are made by those deviating from normative ideals of health, beauty, and moral worth? Amidst collateral damage from the war on obesity, it is incumbent to explore how the digital society and influencer culture provide opportunities to rethink fatness or “excess” weight.

Foregrounding the emotional vicissitudes of fat female embodiment, weight-related stigma, and disordered eating online, this article connects research on influencer culture with burgeoning scholarship on affect and affective communities. Specifically, it contributes theoretically informed insights on how a plus-size influencer, Tess Holliday, confronted the hegemonic framing of fat as “fatal and frightful” (Kwan & Graves, 2013) when seeking to “move” her many followers and promote recovery and healing. Such action, we noted, emerged within a broader communicative context comprising public health, mass mediated, and government-backed “pedagogies of disgust” (Lupton, 2015) that are also entangled with “affective economies” (Ahmed, 2014) of shame, blame, fear, and hate. Notably in nations such as the United States, this is a context wherein “fat stigma” is a “rhetorical disability,” fueled by discourses “about health, morality, and individual failure” (Miller, 2019, p. 60) that have antecedents in a history that equates corpulence with “uncivilized” bodies (Farrell, 2011). Yet, those identifying as fat may resist and fight back, a case of “project stigma” (Scambler, 2018). Formally, we observed that affect or the action of emotion matter within and constitute online “body positive” communities, inviting theorization that elides individualizing and psychologizing accounts (Ahmed, 2014). In that respect, we concur with Fraser et al. (2010) who underscore the need for such theorizing when interrogating obesity discourse.

Our study revealed how Holliday co-created affective content, promoting community engagement via her use of personal voice to narrate distressing biographical experiences. Such “expressions of sentiment,” by and among “affective publics” (Papacharissi, 2015, p. 125) surface and contest the social production of inferiority. Here Holliday reframed fatness and disordered eating as matters pertaining to social justice (Kwan & Graves, 2013) by rhetorically centering “our pain/trauma.” Notably, Holliday juxtaposed detractors’ abrasive comments/assumptions with posts from supportive others who similarly described struggling with their bodies, food, and stigma. “Doing” negative affective labor, Holliday narrated body insecurities and fraught memories, sharing disclosive and reciprocal intimacies (Abidin, 2015). Such words, indicative of what Ahmed (2014, p. 32) terms “testimonial culture … in which narratives of pain and injury have proliferated,” conveyed an authentic concern to confront symbolic violence. In doing so, Holliday's credibility was enhanced by her in-group's responses, including affirmative comments and numbers of likes. Other research indicates that credibility and authenticity are two key norms within influencer communications (Abidin, 2015; Wellman, 2022). Insofar as Ahmed (2014) hints at but does not explore such matters, our article illustrates the usefulness of synthesizing prominent theorizations on affect with influencer studies.

More broadly, authentic self-presentation in digital culture typically associates with positivity within the mood economy wherein, for young adults especially, “legitimacy and self-worth are purchased not with traditional currencies such as work or marriage or class solidarity but instead through the ability to organize their emotions into a narrative of self-transformation” (Silva, 2013, p. 18, emphasis added). In the anti-obesity terrain, healthism and neoliberal modes of governmentality ascribe value to individuals exercising responsibility for their physicality and well-being. Whilst slim ideals and the hegemony of the WCHP arguably disqualify many people from such affirmations, Holliday's Instagram posts publicly circulated as ostensibly authentic examples of (fat) women's attempts to challenge their putative failure in the mood economy. And, insofar as self-transformation narratives provide a script for performing an “ethical self” (Orgad & Nikunen, 2015), influencer content with negative affect could signify “good citizenship” wherein moral worth is derived from confronting social injustice rather than purchasing a physical makeover. Yet, because such practices also implicate neoliberal ideology and identities (e.g., responsible individuals making lifestyle choices), their broader emancipatory potential appears to be limited. This limitation derives from a world where life chances and health are powerfully impacted by social structures (Scambler, 2018), which, for Ahmed (2014, p. 12), are “reified as forms of being” via emotional investment and intensities.

Nonetheless, it is under such conditions that Holliday and her followers sought to fashion intimacy, connectedness, and order out of distance, disconnection, and disorder. Their online affective community not only promised “validation of real feeling” but also credited conversations connecting body insecurities and dietary practices/struggles to cultural marginalization or oppression. Arguably, such communications intimate a collective move toward politicization (even if that is limited to fighting for a sense of belonging and acceptance) (Lopez, 2016) among what might be called “a visceral public” (Johnson, 2016). Visceral publics share intense feelings over possible boundary violations, exemplified when the human body and its orifices might be threatened (e.g., the mouth and vulnerability to being wounded by ingesting unwanted substances). For Johnson, the concept elucidates the dynamics of public health controversies and the shaping of public opinion on matters that are felt to be harmful. By identifying with and appealing to a visceral public's intense feelings, groups can motivate individuals to take action toward particular health issues. So too in our study. Through her repeated, affective phrasing of “we” and “my fat folks,” Holiday appealed to her community of followers and other influencers who were bound by their shared vulnerability and desire to redress injurious, weight-related stigma. Holliday's action affectively reproduced her in-group, with allies publicly advocating their project of “making room for our invisible truths” that included invoking a medically contested condition, atypical anorexia. In short, we observed (virtual) connectedness among a visceral public seeking to support and mutually benefit from their project, a counterfoil to the stereotyping of “fat people” in news media as socially isolated and dehumanized “headless fatties” (Cooper, 2007) who should starve themselves.

Framing in a contested field implies competition and attempts to discredit alternative ways of socially organizing experience (Kwan & Graves, 2013). Whilst Holliday and others in the Fatosphere view bodily acceptance as nurturing psychological well-being, even happiness, more powerful actors (e.g., WHO, 2021) repeatedly frame fatness qua “obesity” as a serious global health threat. As noted, the putative fatality of fatness/obesity has been compounded in the COVID-19 era, providing further impetus (ammunition) for those seeking to “help” and “advise” (attack) bodies deemed “unfit” and requiring correction (Monaghan, 2021). Medicalized “concern” is implicated in weight-related stigma, exacerbating negative mental health and physiological outcomes (Hunger et al., 2015) that are not necessarily neutralized or filtered out by the Fatosphere. To the contrary, social media may amplify weight-related stigma and the affective economy of hate as evidenced by those detractors who “trolled” Holliday's Instagram page and publicly expressed disdain and incredulity. Yet, matters are more complicated than implied by the common polarization of good and bad, the sacred and profane. Public health rhetoric befuddles binary thinking about us/them, self/other, and normal/deviant insofar as obesity discourse frames the majority as “overweight” or “obese” (sic), including men who risk being emasculated by feminizing fat (Monaghan, 2008, 2023).

We finish by acknowledging two additional limitations and the need for further research. First, general limitations surround influencers’ affective strategies that “stick” emotions such as “hurt” and “shame” to bodies (Ahmed, 2014). Ahmed cautions against the fetishization of “the wound” that provides “a form of media spectacle, in which the pain of others produces laughter and enjoyment, rather than sadness or anger” (p. 32). Whilst recognition of and efforts to redress human suffering are ethical imperatives, Ahmed explains that emotions may also “attach us to the very conditions of our subordination” (p. 12), notably the subjugation of the feminine and the body. Accordingly, defining people in terms of their wounds may fuel harmful stereotypes and limit their ability to exist beyond their visceral traumas—an intersectional, relational, dilemma that is entangled with broader configurations of entitlement, privilege, and a global market that commodifies victimhood. Indeed, we would return here to a recent queer intersectional analysis. For Otis (2020), Holliday's visibility on Instagram is enhanced by privileges not enjoyed by other types of fat subject who are multiply marginalized—notably, her whiteness, proximity to conventional European beauty standards, physically active lifestyle, reproductive fitness, and relative youth. The upshot is that appeals to “our pain” conceal and possibly exacerbate intersecting injuries experienced by people with non-normative fat bodies, whilst also enabling individuals who are more favorably positioned on the social hierarchy (including early-middle-aged men with ambiguously defined “dad bods”) (Clay & Brickell, 2022) to capitalize upon (their own and other people's) incommensurable pain. Second, our specific study/approach, examining text published on one influencer's Instagram page, means that our insights are inevitably partial. Different frequency and nature of conversations and image production across heterogeneous social media and multiple influencer ecologies will likely facilitate dissimilar insights on weight/fatness/health and affect.

Future research could include comparative studies of influencers’ beauty/body/health content across social media platforms, further exploring embodied representations, project stigma, and the affective economy. Such research could also explore how differently located social media users, within and outside of the Global North, engage with and co-produce content, especially in the context of enhancing digital media literacy and participation among young audiences (Papaioannou, 2022). Cultural differences, intersecting with myriad social relevancies and structures (e.g., media consumption, political worldviews, material interests, postfeminist sensibilities, socioeconomic status, sexualities, ethnicity), likely shape communication styles, ideas, and values about weight/fatness, disordered eating, and other “health crises” in ways that are hitherto only partially understood. Moreover, cultural meanings and norms, increasingly influenced by global public health discourses and “sacred health knowledge” (Evans et al., 2008) that exceed weight/fatness, will shape the types of content that are considered acceptable or taboo. When generating insights on diverse social media practices, audience responses, and the action of emotion, it is crucial to recognize and engage with these nuances as embodied/embedded in their broader contexts.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Tao Papaioannou

Lee F. Monaghan

Author Biographies

Tao Papaioannou is a professor in the Department of Communications at the University of Nicosia, Cyprus. Her latest articles have appeared in journals such as European Journal of Communication, International Journal of Communication, International Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning and Journal of Media Literacy Education.

Lee F. Monaghan is a professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Limerick, Ireland. He has published eight books and many articles in journals such as Body & Society, Social Science & Medicine, Social Theory & Health, Sociology of Health & Illness and The British Journal of Sociology.

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