Fitness influencers may be selling sexualization, not empowerment
A new philosophical analysis challenges the core premise of 'fitspiration'—the wildly popular fitness movement on Instagram marketed to women as empowerment. Researchers argue that equating sexualization with empowerment may actually undermine women's wellbeing, raising questions for brands, platforms, and marketers who profit from this narrative.
Originaltitel: Will to power: Revaluating (female) empowerment in ‘fitspiration’
<p>Female empowerment has long been a prominent social concern in Western culture. With the rise of social media, the quest for female empowerment has become embodied in self-presentational practices, occurring conspicuously throughout the Instagram fitness subculture: ‘fitspiration’. Here, female empowerment is merged with the body-centrality inherent to fitness, and the self-sexualization that has become characteristic of both photo-based social media in general, and fitspiration in particular. Meanwhile, an extensive body of research highlights numerous detrimental effects of self-sexualization on women. Evidently, something seems awry with the implied proposition ‘sexualization as empowerment’. Drawing on Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy of power and its relationship to human flourishing, this article aims to critically examine the conception of female empowerment expressed in fitspiration and to conceptualize a philosophically compelling reformulation of universal human empowerment. I argue that what is commonly conceived of as female empowerment in trends like fitspiration—delineated in its explicit relationship to sexualization—may be seriously flawed. Rejecting this understanding in favor of a Nietzschean universal alternative may prove beneficial to individuals both within and without the contemporary fitness culture. </p>