Speaking on The Leaders Council Podcast, the founders of two charities spoke out about the impact of influencer culture and social media on the mental health of women and girls, stressing the need for change at source and within education and the law to properly address the issue.
The way in which so-called ‘warped’ perceptions of attractiveness and beauty are bringing about negative attitudes to body image is not a new phenomenon. In 2020, Dr Luke Evans, a Conservative MP and GP who sits on the parliamentary Health and Social Care Select Committee, once referred to social media as the cause of the British public living in a “world of warped reality”.
Dr Evans said at the time: “What people see on social media just can’t be achieved. If you slim someone’s waist or make someone’s biceps bigger on a digital photo, it creates unrealistic aspirations. Through my work [as a GP], I see so many people who are worried about their body image. It plays into anxiety and depression; in the worst cases it can lead to eating disorders.”
Empowered by what he had seen, Dr Evans introduced a Private Member’s Bill known as the Digitally Altered Body Images Bill, a piece of legislation which would require advertisers, broadcasters and publishers by law to display a clear logo in cases where an image of a human body or body part had been ‘digitally altered’. Such a move is not unprecedented in the wider world, with France and Israel already enforcing similar laws.
The Digitally Altered Body Images Bill is currently awaiting its second reading in the House of Commons. However, while new legislation in the pipeline comes as one step in the right direction toward addressing anxiety and depression around body image according to campaigners, two charity chiefs believe that it must form part of a multiple-pronged approach to properly address the problem.
Cheryl Simpson MBE, CEO of the Space4Autism charity, and Kate Blackmore, trainer, counsellor, speaker, women and girls’ mental health advocate, and founder of the charity Motherwell Cheshire, recently came onto The Leaders Council Podcast to share their take on the issue. The two women highlighted how many mental health issues they had come across in their Women’s Action Group had stemmed from body confidence issues, and that social media was not helping the situation.
Sharing her take on the role of social media in poor women’s mental health, Blackmore said: “For young women, many mental health issues do revolve around body image. A lot of the time unfortunately, that is through what males have said to them, but social media also has a lot to answer for.
“A lot of this stems from how these youngsters are accessing influencers. How influencers and social media portray a healthy happy lifestyle is not always healthy for young people, and these young people are holding themselves to impossible standards as a result.
“It is incredible what is allowed to go on with photo editing on social media and magazine covers. Then when we see women, whose photos are published unedited, it is treated as a massive thing because it isn’t the norm, when it should be. All these edited photos of influencers that go onto Instagram and other social networks, these influencers are paid to promote them and are being remunerated for fuelling this culture which is causing damage to mental health and self-esteem.”
While Blackmore acknowledged that the move toward a new law which would expose edited images was a positive one, she stressed that a united front would be needed to tackle what she ultimately felt was a ‘culture’ problem. This course of action, in her view, needs to consist not only of legal forces and raised awareness through campaigning, but also better education of the issue in schools and greater responsibility being taken by influencers and social networks themselves.
“Body confidence does have a huge impact on people, and as women who are role models to impressionable younger women, influencers do need to take some responsibility”, Blackmore said.
“It isn’t just on TV and in magazines anymore; all this is right in the palm of people’s hands. There have been discussions about influencers having to include labels to make clear where photos have been edited or filtered in a new piece of legislation, which is a step in the right direction. But this needs to be implemented across the board with social media. The whole lot needs to be looked at.
“More widely, this is a whole culture issue that no one charity or organisation alone can tackle. This will require a concerted effort from government legislation, and more education in schools. I am supportive of what the government is doing and maintain that it needs to be made very clear on social media where photos are edited, because young people look at their role models, assume that’s what they look like in real life and hold themselves to those standards.
“Influencers currently are role models and they do need to shoulder some responsibility. This even boils down to celebrity mothers who have recently had children and are quickly showing off their rapidly slimmed down bodies. In our mental health work, we are always having to remind women who have recently had children and may be depressed that they cannot hold themselves to the standards of these celebrities. Celebrity mothers most likely have access to personal trainers, nannies and their own chefs, so it is impossible for everyday women to try to live up to that.”
Photo by Matthew Ball on Unsplash
