Fat and Fit? Media portrayal and attitudes of Generation Z toward Fat Acceptance Movement

Absztrakt (kivonat)

Social media usage has become a part of most people’s lives, especially members of Generation Z, and the audience’s attitudes and opinions tend to be influenced by the content shared on the social media platforms. Throughout the years, the Body Positivity and the Fat Acceptance Movement become widely followed phenomena on social media, however, there are few questions raised about the concerns over the fact that the movement supports unhealthy lifestyles. This thesis aims to extend the knowledge on the representation of body-positive messages featured by a fashion magazine and the opinions of female Generation Z members on the movement and the messages of the fashion magazine. Moreover, the paper provides further knowledge on the affecting force of social media on young women’s lives. The study contains a literature review on scientific journals, articles, and a theoretical framework of communication and media theories. The thesis will use two types of methodology, content analysis, and in-depth interviews. Content analysis will be used to analyze four chosen Cosmopolitan Magazine articles about plus-size women. The articles’ text-based contents and all of their files in JPG format will be studied. In the second part of the methodology, 5 in-depth interviews will be conducted with 5 Generation Z women; the formulation of the interview questions will be based on the findings of the content analysis. The results will consist of 2 main components: the representation of plus-size women in the picked articles, and the standing point of the interview respondents on the findings of the content analysis. The collected data contribute to the growing research on the Fat Acceptance Movement and Body Positivity and bring new insights on Generation Z and media messages. Therefore, the study creates protentional ground for future investigations on women’s perspectives of the phenomena.