Women's discursive performances of wellness on social media: a feminist critical discourse analysis

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My doctoral research examines constructions of feminineidentity within female discursive performances ofwellness on Instagram. Wellness can be understood as acontemporary health culture, encompassing a collection oflifestyle beliefs and practices to promote mind and bodypurification and optimisation. Both as producers andconsumers, women are more likely than men to engagewith wellness, often taking to social media to enactperformances of lifestyle correctness online. At the timeof writing, 43.2 million posts on Instagram appear under thehashtag wellness, signposting content that enacts a visualdocumentation of women's wellness journeys. Utilisingcritical discourse analysis (CDA) through the lens offeminist theory (Fairclough et al, 2011; Lazar 2005), thisresearch aims to understand and elucidate the waysthrough which wellness discourses produce an idealised'healthy' feminine identity, and how this relates to andreinforces the ideological gendering of health and bodyconsciousness. Findings will offer insight into the socio political nature of women's health anxieties and theirrelationship to wider structures of gender-basedoppression.