Jessica F. Saunders PhD

The relationship between celebrities and body image ideals among Hispanic and Black women The current study sought to examine the aspects of celebrity bodies that lead Black and Hispanic emerging adult women to idealize and strive for those bodies. This diverse sample purposely focused ...

💛 More representation.
💛 More nuance.
💛 More space for all body stories.

#BodyImage #RepresentationMatters #FeministMediaStudies #BeautyStandards #MediaLiteracy #CulturalIdentity #BlackWomen #HispanicWomen #BodyPositivity

Read the full article: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Cultural background, media we consume, and the representation we see all shape which bodies are celebrated — and which are seen as “ideal.”

We call for more body-positive, culturally specific approaches that honor how Black and Hispanic women experience beauty differently.

💫 Black participants largely admired curvier Black women celebrities, showing how different communities uplift different beauty ideals.

💫 Hispanic participants were more likely to idealize white celebrity body standards — especially the push to be “skinny.”

✨ New Research Spotlight ✨

How do celebrity bodies shape the way young Black and Hispanic women see themselves?

Our recent study in Feminist Media Studies dug into this question by analyzing how women ages 18–29 describe the celebrity bodies they admire. The findings were powerful:

The relationship between celebrities and body image ideals among Hispanic and Black women The current study sought to examine the aspects of celebrity bodies that lead Black and Hispanic emerging adult women to idealize and strive for those bodies. This diverse sample purposely focused ...

💫 Black participants largely admired curvier Black women celebrities, showing how different communities uplift different beauty ideals.

💫 Hispanic participants were more likely to idealize white celebrity body standards — especially the push to be “skinny.”

Sigh indeed

Sigh

My 20 month old was “reading” the intro to human development book I teach with before bed tonight, enthralled by the pictures of other toddlers in the early childhood chapter and all I could think was “at least someone is doing the assigned reading”

“It helps me to be more aware and connected to my body when I spent so many years trying to disconnect”: A qualitative pilot study on the impact of time spent in nature on eating disorder recovery Eating disorders have high relapse and mortality rates, complex treatment needs, and disproportionately affect women. A common characteristic of women…

In press today! We interviewed women in ED recovery on the role nature played and continues to olay on their recovery process, drawing from Piran’s theory of developmental embodiment www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Felt. This summer I had 10% of students (that I could easily identify; I’m sure there were more ) using it to generate online discussion posts each week and not even bothering to change the formatting 🫠 I started requiring direct textbook quotes w page numbers so they had to put some human effort in

I also entered grades while in labor 🥲

My newly one year old screamed when she had to sit on the scale today at her 12mo well visit. Glad to see her rejection of diet culture and BMI as a health metric has started already 😂

Current trends and future directions in internalized weight stigma research: a scoping review and synthesis of the literature - Journal of Eating Disorders Background Since the first papers focused on internalized weight stigma were published in the mid 2000’s, the literature has grown into a robust field that complements existing knowledge on weight sti...

It has been a quiet year pub-wise (maternity leave and position switch), but I am proud to have gotten these 2024 weight stigma and body image papers into the world:

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

A meta analysis I have been working on for FOUR YEARS (and three updated database searches later) with nearly 300 studies and 400 effect sizes is finally under review. Someone please stop me before I undertake something like this again

The requests in my inbox the last few weeks from random journals have been EXCESSIVE