Racism, white supremacy, and resistance in body image research and practice: Introduction to the special issue.

Abstract

Over a year ago, Landor et al. (2024) argued that white supremacy and racialised inequalities continue to affect body image scholarship and research. Drawing on theories of intersectionality and inclusivity, they advanced the Sociostructural-Intersectional Body Image (SIBI) framework, which centres the experiences of racialised bodies and provides researchers with a scaffold to begin challenging white supremacy and racism in body image research and practice. Building on Landor et al.'s (2024) position paper, this special issue brings together initial research drawing on the SIBI framework to examine the ways in which white supremacy and racism affect body image(s) in minoritised communities and how inclusive lenses can be deployed to dismantle the legacy of racism in body image work. In this introductory editorial, we present a brief description of the SIBI framework, consider relevant research that has begun to more fully consider racism and white supremacy in body image research and practice, and introduce the articles that are included in the special issue. We conclude by underscoring the need for further research that combats systemic racial inequalities and white supremacy, which will propel our field into explicitly anti-racist and decolonising research and practice.