Why Twitter Needs to Cut It Out With Fatphobic Promoted Tweets

If you’re on Twitter then you’ve almost definitely seen promoted tweets on your timeline.  Twitter tailors its adverts to its users so theoretically they show you businesses your demographic might be interested in. You also might have noticed that sometimes you get twitter ads like this:

Admittedly, this is not the worst of the dieting ads I’ve seen on Twitter. But the company stills seems to subscribe to the notions that looking like a model is the ideal and that a ‘beach body’ is something everyone should strive to have. All of which contributes to a culture of ‘thinspiration’ and thigh gaps.

This tweet appeared on my timeline likely because I’m a nineteen-year-old female, something Twitter can tell from the information you provide them with when you sign up. I don’t search for diets online, I don’t follow any diet-centric Twitter accounts, and I don’t have any diet-related apps downloaded on my phone. (And yes, Twitter does tailor ads based on the other apps you have). So the only logical conclusion I can reach is that my gender and age is the cause of me seeing this promotion. The American Psychological Association reports that girls consistently report lower self-esteem than boys, as well as a ‘positive age effect’ whereby self-esteem increases as age increases. What can be extrapolated from this is that teenage girls are one of the most at risk groups for low self-esteem. One of the reasons the APA cites for the gender difference is the ‘cultural emphasis of girls’ and women’s physical appearance’, something Twitter evidently seems to be enforcing.

By targeting their advertising and allowing ‘fad diet’ companies that consistently use poorly taken, intentionally ‘unattractive’ images for ‘before’ images and more conventionally ‘attractive’ images for their results, Twitter is promoting ideals of beauty that contribute to the ‘cultural emphasis’ on looks that the APA highlights. This decreases the self-esteem of the very women they target. In all these diet tweets the focus seems to be on beauty instead of health, reducing women to a cosmetic process instead of supporting the kind of health kicks that encourage eating more fruit and veg or drinking more water. And to add insult to injury, women’s bodies become a commodity – this woman, whether she’s given consent to it or not, is being using to sell a service to other women by telling them what they need to look like to be beautiful or happy.

Social media is so often a place where people go to get away from whatever might be bothering them in real life. It just doesn’t seem right for them to be assaulted with suggestions that plus size isn’t attractive or isn’t healthy, reinforced by these ‘after’ photos of women smiling in make-up and fancy clothing contrasted against miserable ‘before’ photos. As if losing weight would be the key to happiness.

It’s an economic issue, of course. Businesses pay to advertise and I’m sure Twitter doesn’t want to turn down the cash. But should they be prioritising profit above the mental health of their users? What, if any, obligation do they have to make their site a positive place to be? Twitter has been under fire for not tackling homophobia, sexism and racism as harshly as they should. Maybe we should be adding fatphobia to the list of things they should start addressing. Particularly in their promoted tweets targeted at those who are most vulnerable to be negatively affected by them. 

• body shaming
• KCL
• self esteem
• twitter