Are you fitting in? A study on the effects of fitness influencers on male body image

Abstract: Background: The ideals of beauty standards had been under constant change throughout history, and quite often would remain out of reach to the determent of many. The application of an idealized image of oneself remains a powerful tool when it comes to persuasion in social media and marketing. Although mostly spoken of within the context of women, the pressure to appeal to the beauty standard does not leave men out. Within fitness, a lot of attention is already focused on the body, and with the boon in technology we find ourselves exposed to the idealized images more than ever. Fitness influencers impact the lives of many, and the trend of an idealized male body image is being promoted daily through social media channels with varying receptions.  Purpose: Previous studies have been primarily focused on women as a sampling group, whereby it has shown that also men suffer from the idealized beauty and body standards which are promoted through different media. Especially, nowadays where social media and the impact of influencer maintain gaining more power over individuals. By studying the effect that image posts from fitness influencer have on the male body image, it is able to understand how male user react to such unrealistic beauty standards. Method: To fulfil the purpose of this qualitative study, 10 in-depth interviews were conducted with male participants in their twenties from international background. All of them followed not only an active lifestyle, which included gymming but as well following fitness influencers on Instagram. As a deductive approach was utilized for this thesis, the collected date was decoded, analysed and interpreted thematically with support of the theory. Conclusion: The findings of this study reveal that men feel content with the perception of their body image when aligned with the ideals portrayed by the fitness influencers. The effects of witnessing the idealized images had led to temporary dissatisfaction in their body image, but the participants had shown to further reflect on the presented content and the outcome resulted in feelings of motivation and a positive expectation of what their further actions could bring. Moreover, the exposure to the images is accompanied by deliberate upward comparisons to further serve as a reflection of desires which results in motivation to continue to participate in the process.