La construcción visual sobre los ideales de belleza del cuerpo femenino en instagram

Abstract

Images or visual representations are indispensable visualization tools for individuals. Currently, the image of a woman exposed in the cyberspace, especially in social networks, represents a stereotyped image, where the body is the most affected. On the Instagram platform, where visual things predominate, millions of women upload photos exposing a body considered as perfect. For this reason, the objective of this research was to explain the body beauty ideals of a woman on Instagram. To demonstrate it, this investigation had a qualitative virtual ethnographic approach, where 5 young Ecuadorian women, around 20 and 27 years old, participated and were chosen through a non-probabilistic convenience sampling. The instruments used to collect data were the interview, life history and photographic analysis. Through the data collected in the interview, it was possible to extract the discourses about beauty that predominate nowadays. On the other hand, the life history and photographic analysis of each participant allowed to explain the beauty ideals about female body image that are presented on Instagram. The results demonstrated that women share images according to the stereotypes imposed by society, however, they have tried to lower the high standards of beauty by normalizing realistic bodies.