Gender-Expansive Youths’ Perspectives of Body Challenges

• In Event: Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Topic - Social, Emotional, Personality

Abstract

In the era of social media, a new phenomenon of body challenges has emerged. Not previously defined, a body challenge is a trend where an individual checks if their body can look a certain way to pass the specific challenge (e.g., the thigh gap, the A4 paper challenge, etc.). These challenges typically go viral on social media through hashtags. These trending body challenges may be damaging to youths’ body image as they often endorse the thin ideal and narrow beauty standards, which may result in body dissatisfaction for those who cannot successfully pass the challenge. Yet, no research has been conducted on body challenges. Further, this phenomenon may impact gender-expansive youth differently than boys or girls. For instance, trans girls may feel more pressure to appear feminine, as shown in trans women (Mofradidoost, 2019).

Therefore, we sought to examine how gender-expansive youth perceive body challenges and how the challenges affect their body image. We asked gender-expansive (i.e., transgender, nonbinary, and genderfluid) adolescents and emerging adults three open-ended questions via text message. Question one asked, “have you, or someone you know, tried any of these challenges?” Question two asked, “what do you think about these trending body challenges?” and question three asked, “how do these body challenges make you feel about your body?” Twelve participants (Mage = 18, SD = 2.20) were included in this analysis. Majority of participants were White (83%).

A two-phase qualitative analysis proposed by Charmaz (2014) was used. The first phase consisted of rapidly picking out interesting pieces from each response. The second phase involved developing codes based on those pieces and then assigning each response one or more codes. Codes were reworked and reorganized if needed. The final codes then arose to become overall themes of the responses. Question one findings showed that no participants had tried a body challenge themselves. A small minority of participants knew someone who had tried them, either a friend or a family member (17%). For question two, major themes of body challenges as toxic (83%) and ridiculous (33%) emerged. A subtheme of commentary on people’s mental health and body image was also present when discussing toxicity (42%). For question three, major themes of no impact (45%) and confidence without body challenges (36%) were present. A small minority of participants felt bad about their bodies as a result of the presence of body challenges (9%).

Overall, gender-expansive youth shared similar views on body challenges. Interestingly, these youth did not appear to be heavily influenced by body challenges, as nobody tried a body challenge themselves and most believed that they were harmful. These findings suggest that perhaps gender-expansive youth have some resilience to body challenges, which is supported by a previous study finding trans youth who were developmentally further along in accepting a gender identity expressed body satisfaction and resilience (McGuire, Doty, Catalpa, & Ola, 2016). Future work should give more attention to the gender-expansive group, with larger sample sizes and more in-depth investigation into why they might be resilient.

Authors

• Kerrie Leonard, North Dakota State University
  Presenting Author

• Elizabeth H. Blodgett Salafia, North Dakota State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Elizabeth Martwick, North Dakota State University
  Non-Presenting Author