REPRESENTATION OF WOMAN'S BODY ON INSTAGRAM : Qualitative Content Analysis of the year 2018 posts of top fitness influencer Michelle Lewin

This study is designed to observe what 21st century women‟s body ideal is, to give an insight to the women‟s body image representation on Instagram and to find out if social media influencer Michelle Lewin complies with this sociocultural image. Although there is an extensive amount of research on the mass media‟s effect on defining and imposing the ideals on women‟s body image, few studies have explored and focused on the image-based social media platform, Instagram. Instagram is an important space for body image research, as its content is mainly visual and everybody has the ability to be both a consumer and an active producer of the content. Mass media have been frequently accused of imposing limited and unachievable representations of femininity and consequently causing perceived women dissatisfaction with their bodies. As Instagram is becoming increasingly popular, it is important to explore potential ramifications of this social paradigm for current and future generations. In this study, I conduct a qualitative content analysis of images of the top fitspo influencer Michelle Lewin specifically focused on women‟s body image. By analyzing latest content (posts of the year 2018) from her Instagram account, I seek to understand what is the relation between the most common types of posts and the ones that receive most engagement from her followers. Finally the research reveals: the most common theme of the images coded are those where Michelle Lewin appears posing in a sexually suggestive manner, unrelated to any fitness activity – those are the images that receive highest engagement from her followers. My hypothesis where I state that Michelle Lewin depicts 21st century woman‟s body ideal ultimately proves right by the results of this study. At the end of the day, her body is the image of body ideal that she represents and commercializes though Instagram