The INSIDER Summary:Instagram is home to lots of fitness personalities with millions of followers.They tend to post pictures with their faces cropped out or blocked out.These photos often objectify the female body.Psychologists say exposure to images like these can harm women's mental health.In recent yearsInstagram has served as alaunchpad for fitness mega-stars. Women like Kayla Itsines, Jen Selter, Anna Victoria, and more are using the social network to sell workouts, meal plans, and apparel ' and to provide visual inspiration to their millions of devoted fans.At first glance, their Instagram feedsseem innocuous'even virtuous.But browse through long enough and you'll notice a strange trend: In a lot of photos, their faces are completely hidden. Sometimes they're blocked out by a phone snapping a post-workout mirror selfie. Other times, faces or heads are simply cropped out of the frame altogether.Line up a few of these photos next to each other and the effect is almost creepy:And it's not just that they're slightly weird: These images play into a larger, darker cultural phenomenon that can hold women back ' and may even harm their health in the long term.It's called objectification, and it happens when a woman is viewed as a body ' not a whole person ' that exists to be viewed and enjoyed by other people. Cropping a woman's face out of a photo is one of the quicker ways to achieve this.And scientists have found that it's fairly common among Instagram fitness photos. In 2016, body image researchers at Australia's Flinders University analyzed a random selection of 600 Instagram photos labeled with the hashtag "#fitspiration." Of all the photos depicting women, 31% did not show a face or head. And this year, a different group of researchers analyzed 415 fitspiration photos. They found that roughly half of the photos depicting women lacked a visible face.But this also isn't unique to Instagram. It's actually been happening for decades. A post shared by Tone It Up (@toneitup)on May 8, 2017 at 10:49am PDT Researchers first reported the faceless-women phenomenon in print media back in the early 1980s. Here's how psychologists Barbara Fredrickson and Tomi-Ann Roberts described it in 1997:"Whereas men tend to be portrayed in print media and artwork with an emphasis on the head and face [...] women tend to be portrayed with an emphasis on the body. Indeed it is not uncommon for magazine photographs to portray dismembered women, eliminating their heads altogether, focused exclusively on their bodies or body parts."Sound familiar'Instagram's biggest fitness accounts often showimages of isolated body parts ' flexed abs, round butts, thighs with a gap between them. Holding a phone in front of a face to take a mirror selfie isn't all that different. The facemay not be cropped out of the photo, but it's still being blocked in order to better frame and showcase a woman's body parts. Plus, all thesephotosalso exist to be viewed and consumed by other people. That's the very nature of social media. Objectification in photos isn't just unfortunate. It can have real negative effects on women's lives. A post shared by Jen Selter (@jenselter)on Mar 14, 2017 at 12:08pm PDT Back in 1997, Fredrickson and Roberts argued that looking at objectifying images in the media can actually make women view themselves as objects, leading them to monitor their outward appearance almost constantly. But always thinking about how your body looks to other people ' and how it looks compared to "ideal" bodies online or in magazines ' can cause feelings of shame and anxiety, they said.They even suggested that self-objectification can contribute to mental illnesses like eating disorders and depression. (More recent research backs them up on these points, too.)Finally, self-objectification can be a major distraction."In a culture that objectifies the female body, whatever girls and women do, the potential always exists for their thoughts and actions to be interrupted by images of how their bodies appear," Fredrickson and Roberts wrote. If you've felt distracted from an exercise or dance move or work task because you're worried about how your body looks to other people around you, you probably know exactly what they meant.Of course, social media didn't exist back when those two psychologists made their arguments. Instagram has only been around since 2010. But scientists are already studying how the social network ' and its fitness culture in particular ' can affect women mentally. Preliminary research suggests that looking at Instagram's fitness-related images can inspire women to exercise or eat better ' but also immediately decreases their levels satisfaction with their bodies.This is a massive problem ' and fitness stars alone aren't responsible for it. A post shared by Anna Victoria (@annavictoria)on Jun 13, 2017 at 5:17pm PDT To be fair, we can't expect a small handful of fitness enthusiasts to solve a problem this ugly and sprawling and deeply entrenched in our society. And it's not like all fitness stars are consciously trying to objectify themselves every time they snap a selfie that doesn't show their face. That would be ridiculous. Maybe ' just like the rest of us ' fitness stars are victims of a culture that routinely objectifies women. Maybe they're part of the problem. It's likely they fall somewhere in between. But, given their massive followings, fitness stars are in a unique position to make a positive difference. A post shared by KAYLA ITSINES (@kayla_itsines)on May 16, 2017 at 2:02pm PDT The photos they post reach millions of people, and as INSIDER reported in June, those images may have dramatic effects on how followers view their own bodies.Many fitness stars claim, over and over and over again, that getting fit is not necessarily about appearance. They insist they want to help their followers feel good, not just look good.If they really mean that, they should post fewer photosthat focus so explicitly on looks. They should make more room in their Instagram feeds for instructional exercise videos, inspirational quotes, or images of good-for-you foods.And they should also retire the faceless fitness selfies that reduce the female body into a collection of parts. No, it won't eliminate the objectification that happens in other media outlets. But it's a halfway decent place to start.Join the conversation about this storyNOW WATCH: This water fitness class will put your balance to the test
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