Jen Selter

According to the researchers, social media influencers from around the world are either promoting unhealthy body types or promoting over-sexuality on their Instagram pages. On Instagram, Jen Selter, for example, has 13.8 million followers. She makes videos of herself in which her abs and buttocks are prominently displayed in a sexualizing manner. Brian Johnson, also known as the Liver King, has over five million followers on all his social media pages. He often appears without a shirt to emphasize his chiseled abs, contributing to body dysmorphia in young males.

According to a male sports science researcher from Sweden, women who upload frisky workout videos under the guise of encouraging others to get fitter risk contributing to a culture of sexual misogyny. The latest 'fitspo' or 'fitspiration' trend sees female celebrities posting pictures or exercise videos of themselves online in the hopes of enforcing others to get fit. Such images and videos are common on social media platforms such as Instagram, where women can gain millions of followers by posting such fitness material. These women are falling into a narcissistic trap, according to Aurélien Daudi, a sports science researcher at Malmö University in Sweden. 'Fitspiration captures the essence of social media's tumultuous side,' he said. "Within this period, the well-trained, attractive, and "sexy" body is being given a lot of attention.' They could have been revealed by examining what they were focusing on, according to him. "Even if the captions often contain explicit references to exercise, the photographs on social media are usually not focused on the fitness itself,' he said. 'The photographs, on the other hand, tend to either showcase deliberately chosen poses or highlight specific body parts.' Fittest, according to him, helps women to defye social norms surrounding the body's "inspicuous denigration of the body as a sexually desirable object." Mr Daudi claims that philosophers have dubbed this phenomenon "pornoinflation," a pattern in which increasing exhibitionism, even of 'intimate' conduct, is used to capture social interest. This trend lends itself to social media, which provides instant gratification in the form of likes and shares. According to the author, the result, rather than an internal urge to get fit, women engage in exercise to merely please others with their bodies.