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Item #Bodypositive : performances of body positivity by influencers on Instagram : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Psychology (Health Endorsement) at Massey University, Albany Campus, Aotearoa/New Zealand(Massey University, 2019) Jones, Aroha MoanaWomen around the world are increasingly using the social media platform Instagram, a popular photo-sharing application, to promote body acceptance and address unrealistic appearance-related ideals. Drawing on ideas of performance and performativity (Butler, 1988, 1990; Goffman, 1959, 1976) this research examines the performative practices and performances of body positive influencers on Instagram and considers how influencers are self-presenting, both visually and textually, to discursively construct and produce body positive identities. I interpreted the performances of body positive influencers as meaningful practices of resistance that offer promising moments of instability and threaten to destabilise narrow, predominantly white, Western, hetero-normative beauty standards, including the thin-ideal. Instagram appears to offer body positive influencers a productive space for reimagining and re-imaging the ways that bodies are enacted and performed. However, despite this, influencers occasionally slip from body positive discourses to pre-existing discourses of idealised female beauty and conventional feminine rhetoric, thus, at times repeating and (re)producing the very ideologies they purport to reject. An unexpected finding of this research was that many of the influencers discussed body positivism alongside deeply personal accounts of recovery from eating disorders and disordered eating. This thesis is unique and distinguished from previous research, in that it explores body positivity in the context of eating disorder recovery. Key findings are that the current iteration of body positivity on Instagram can be read as an undertaking that troubles hegemonic norms of female beauty, facilitates corporeal performances of resistance, and opens a new space for the performance, documentation, and discussion of recovery.Item How women cope with pregnancy and early mothering after recovery from an eating disorder : a grounded theory of women's experience : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment for the degree of Master of Science in Nutrition at Massey University(Massey University, 2005) Gunn, CarolineThis study used a qualitative approach, specifically Grounded Theory to explore how women who have had an eating disorder earlier in their lives, subsequently "recovered", experienced pregnancy and mothering. Ten women with a previous eating disorder, who were now mothers, were interviewed. Also, eight women without a history of an eating disorder and of comparable body mass were also interviewed for reference purposes. The study aimed to gain an understanding of how a woman recovers from an eating disorder, what the experience of pregnancy is like for them, with an emphasis on weight gain and nutritional needs and how they managed breastfeeding and the introduction of solids. The Grounded Theory developed focused on the core category of "measuring up" and how this need to measure up, cuts across all the women's life stages. The eating disorder is seen as a coping strategy when the need to measure up first presents. As the women were able to access more constructive coping strategies they recovered. For many of the women, exercise became their alternate coping strategy for the need to "measure up". The "recovered" women were very motivated to, and did have healthy pregnancies. Most women wanted nutritional advice during their pregnancy but said they were not offered any by health professionals. Their pregnancies were characterised by predominantly very high weight gains (6/10), a couple of very low weight gains (2/10) with only two women gaining within recommended limits. Their infant's birth weights were above normal, the majority of women breastfed for 9 months and there was no reported difficulty with infant solids feeding. Some women with a previous eating disorder reported difficulty when their own children (girls) reached adolescence. There was considerable eating restraint within the reference group and these were characterised by low prepregnancy BMIs and low pregnancy weight gains. The implications of this research are that young people must be encouraged as early as possible to seek out more constructive coping strategies for feelings of negativity. The recovered women appeared to experience relatively trouble free pregnancies without undue weight gain anxiety and early infant feeding was not problematic. The study highlighted a need for an increased emphasis on nutritional guidance for all women prior to conception and during pregnancy, as there can be significant dysfunction with food and feeding, present in women without a history of an eating disorder.