Instagram posts tagged with #SexPositivity more often promote objectification, narrow beauty standards, and commercial branding than sexual empowerment, a study has found. sexual roles.
Sex positivity is usually understood as a movement that treats sexuality as a healthy and potentially empowering part of life. It emphasizes consent, autonomy, pleasure, respect, sex education, and acceptance of diverse sexual identities and expressions. In this sense, sex positivity is not just about being ‘pro-sex’, it’s also about challenging shame, prejudice, coercion and narrow-minded thinking about sexuality.
But as sex-positive words have become more prominent online, some researchers and critics have questioned whether their meaning has shifted in popular culture. Teagan Stotz and colleagues investigated how sex positivity is actually portrayed on Instagram, one of the world’s most influential social media platforms.
The researchers conducted a cross-sectional content analysis of Instagram posts using the hashtag #SexPositivity. They created a research Instagram account and collected every fifth eligible public post published between October 1 and November 2, 2023, creating an initial sample of 500 posts. Video posts were excluded so that the analysis could focus only on still images and their accompanying captions, and four posts that could not be translated into English were removed, leaving a final sample of 496 posts.
The researchers systematically coded each post using coding procedures established in previous content analyses. They looked at visual characteristics, such as whether posts contained photos of people, text-only images, drawings, or sexual products.
For photos depicting people, programmers assessed perceived gender, age, race, and body size using Pulvers et al.’s (2004) body rating scale, conformity to Western beauty ideals, range of clothing, and indicators of sexualization such as emphasis on certain body parts, sexually suggestive poses, and whether the face was obscured. We also combined the visual and textual content of each post to analyze messages that reflected established sex-positive themes such as consent, sexual health, education, autonomy, empowerment, relationships, and respect for diversity, as identified by Ivanski and Kohut (2017).
The findings suggested that there is a clear gap between sex-positive ideals and how hashtags are frequently used. More than half of the posts featured photos of people. In these photos, more than 80% of the people in the photos were women. They were most often depicted as young men who were white, small, traditionally attractive by Western standards, and wore skimpy clothing.
Objectification was also common, with more than 86% of the photos containing at least one indicator of sexual objectification, such as suggestive poses, emphasis on certain body parts, or partial or complete omission of the face. Women were more likely than men to be seen as conforming to Western beauty ideals, to wear revealing clothing, and to be treated as sexual objects.
The caption and overall content of the post were similar. Relatively few posts addressed core sex-positive themes such as consent, sexual health, sex education, autonomy, and respectful relationships. Instead, many posts appeared to serve promotional purposes. About a third functioned primarily as advertisements, often for products such as lingerie or sexual products. Others appear to be aimed at gaining followers, promoting influencers, or driving users to monetized platforms.
Overall, this study suggests that #SexPositivity on Instagram is often used as a branding and marketing tool rather than as a forum for inclusive discussion about sexuality. While this hashtag may suggest empowerment, much of the content attached to it appears to be reinforcing the very patterns that the sex positivity movement sought to challenge.
Notably, this study only examined public static Instagram posts that used a single hashtag over a relatively short period of time. Videos, private posts, and posts using other relevant hashtags are not included. As a result, the findings do not capture all forms of sex-positive content on Instagram or broader social media.
The study, “Sex positivity or sexual objectification? A content analysis of #SexPositivity posts on Instagram,” was authored by Teagan Stotts, Jessica L. McKelprang, Danielle Hunt, and Simone Buswell.
