Influence of social media

While the majority of her experiences have been positive when using social media, Tam said some people use their platforms to spread negativity due to ignorance. 

“(Social media) has really helped the movement but also with social media there is hate and you’re opening up yourself to be commented on by people who don’t understand the movement,” Tam said. “It does breed toxicity because some people are seeing ‘oh I can comment whatever I want because this person can’t see me and I can try to tear them down.’” 

Her willingness to self-curate her social media feeds has led Polivoda to silence hate and have an overall positive experience on most platforms. 

“There’s a lot of gross (stuff) on the internet or really fatphobic stuff or things that pretend they’re body positive but are really just damaging messages,” Polivoda said. “I have no qualms about silencing that, unfollowing, turning it off, reporting it whatever. I think because I take that strategy, I’ve had a really positive interaction with social media.”

While Morrison feels like the movement has been resonating with people, traditional beauty standards are still ingrained in our perception of ourselves. Additionally, while the movement may reject an old body standard, it can often adopt new ones that are enforced in the community through praise and popularity. 

“With the whole movement, I feel like it’s finally starting to uplift people, but at the same time there’s always that one standard that people will initially hold you to. Because we have that, not everyone’s perfect and we still judge ourselves off of that one initial thought,” Morrison said.

According to Pieper-Berchem, the few individuals who do actively defend victims of cyberbullying are often left defeated.

“I see some things out there where people will actually stand up,” Pieper-Berchem said. “They’ll take a stand and they’ll demand that the photoshopping stop, they demand when somebody is bullying somebody or demanding that perfection. But again, they’re outnumbered.” 

Social media has developed into a space that only showcases highlight reels of others’ lives which can cause unrealistic body and lifestyle expectations, according to Roether. 

“The main part of social media is that it only shows the good parts of people’s lives and the perfect things. Posts are edited and use facetune filters so it’s not realistic in any way,” Roether said. “It’s still hard to see those things and also recognize those people don’t have a perfect life.”

For Tam, social media has allowed her to present a version of herself that is more true to who she really is.

“I’ve started to show my authentic body, unedited, stretch marks, all of that because I want other people to feel more comfortable doing that,” Tam said. “It comes with an individual responsibility to make it more casual, more authentic and make social media what it was intended for which was to show your authentic life to other people.”