The Media As a Source of Weight Stigma for Pregnant and Postpartum Women

Objective: The media often contain weight-stigmatizing material. However, little is known about pregnant and postpartum women's experiences with media-based weight stigma.

Methods: Two studies investigated weight stigma in the media from multiple perspectives. Study 1 analyzed open-response examples of weight-stigmatizing experiences coming from the media, broadly defined, from 123 pregnant and postpartum women (from a larger sample of 501). Study 2 identified online news-media articles about pregnancy and weight published during the study 1 data collection period (August to November 2017).

Results: Study 1 revealed that weight stigma was common and frequent in media, manifesting across three themes: (1) ideal appearance of pregnant bodies, (2) pressure to quickly "bounce back" after birth to a prepregnancy appearance, and (3) media praising celebrities for achieving either of the previous themes. Study 2 identified 33 articles. A content analysis revealed that women with overweight or obesity were rarely portrayed in images. Additionally, discussion of weight was often negative, focusing on adverse maternal-child health consequences. Finally, media-communicated ideals for weight and weight loss were often unrealistic and did not reference medical guidelines.

Conclusions: This work is the first to document that online news media are a pervasive and potentially distressing source of pregnancy-related weight stigma, suggesting much-needed reform in media guidelines.