SELF launched in 1979 as one of the first women’s health and fitness magazines. Our mission has always been to help people live healthier lives. Despite good intentions, however, we’ve published stories, headlines, and pictures in our nearly 40-year history that contributed to our culture of weight stigma and unrealistic body expectations. The way we as a society talk about weight and health is flawed, and SELF unfortunately played some role in that.

Of course, SELF isn’t solely responsible for our past or current societal attitudes about weight and health, and neither are women’s magazines or health magazines in general. The health media landscape has changed dramatically in the last few years, for instance—something SELF editors know well, given that the publication transitioned to a digital-led brand in December 2016. Social media, wellness startups, celebrity influencers, and other factors also all promote expectations, unrealistic and otherwise, about what “health” means and looks like today.

None of this is news. For decades, researchers have studied how media consumption is associated with negative body image and the development of disordered eating behavior, especially among adolescents and young women. And feminists and fat positivity activists have been talking about the issue for just as long, holding mass media and celebrities accountable for their messaging and potential impact.

Thanks to the work of these researchers, writers, and activists, as well as the demand from thoughtful consumers, health and wellness-focused content creators have, to some degree, adjusted how they talk about weight and size and health. I’ve worked in this industry for a little over a decade now, for a variety of brands, and have seen this shift firsthand. The publications I’ve worked for (as well as the ones I haven’t) have made changes to their house styles related to how to talk about weight, weight loss, size, fitness, nutrition, and health. What was standard lingo and practice ten years ago in many cases wouldn’t make it past a first round of editing today. I also know that I personally wrote and edited things in the past that I would do differently today, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

We have our own general house style at SELF; it’s something that the other editors and I talk about, internally, pretty much all the time. It’s not something we’ve talked about publicly, though, in large part because of this awkward, obvious elephant in the room. But behind the scenes, we’ve been operating with a set of continuously updating and changing guidelines for years.

Some of these guidelines are extremely obvious, and centered on word choices. No more “bikini body,” “body goals,” or bodies described as fruits. No more assigning moral value to food choices, or prescribing exercises as penance to burn off the calories you’ve just consumed. Some of the guidelines are a bit more nuanced. Avoid associating fitness with weight loss—because, among other reasons, research shows that working out alone won’t cause you to lose weight; but more importantly, there are many other, better reasons to work out that have nothing to do with losing weight. No talking about weight loss without also talking about the larger context, including sleep, stress, hormones, genetics, and the fact that weight loss isn’t the best goal for everyone.

And we’ve also made an effort to make our creative choices—illustrations, images, photos, videos, social posts, and so on—more inclusive, to show that people with all different types of bodies can participate in healthy behaviors, without having to focus on weight. Representation is important.

All of that has been a good start. But it hasn’t felt like enough.

That’s why we’ve decided to publish our guidelines, in the form of a style guide, for public consumption. The hope is that this transparency will hold us accountable. Before now these standards haven’t all existed in writing, in one centralized place, for everyone on the team to see. For this reason, publishing this style guide will also make us more consistent in what we create going forward.

It’s also possible that these recommendations may be helpful to other editors, writers, producers, influencers, and content creators who grapple with this stuff—it’s a little inside baseball, but I’ve personally found a lot of value in BuzzFeed’s Style Guide and Racked’s Ethics Statement. It helps to understand how other people are thinking about these topics.

These guidelines are a work in progress. We will inevitably make changes and evolve our thinking and positioning on some of these points. We will probably get some things wrong, make mistakes, and take positions that some people may disagree with. But it’s the next step, and an important one, in helping to push the cultural dialogue around weight and health in a more nuanced and constructive direction, and to be mindful of our role in that dynamic.

I hope it helps.

BRAND MISSION AND VALUES

Mission:
SELF is a health and wellness brand. Our mission is to help people live healthier lives, whatever their wellness goals are. We do that by providing tools and support, as well as reporting on evidence-based information and expert-approved advice that helps people understand how their bodies work, including the risks and benefits of the choices they have available to them.

Values:
Our guiding values are inclusivity, accuracy, empathy, and autonomy.

Inclusivity, because we’ll only be able to help people if they feel seen, heard, respected, and welcome.
Accuracy, because information is only helpful and empowering if it’s true.
Empathy, because we’ll only be able to help people if they feel supported, not judged.
Autonomy, because what you do with your body is your choice.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR WORDS AND EDITORIAL CONTEXT

Based on our research and reporting on the topic, there are some basic concepts that should underpin our coverage of weight, bodies, size, weight loss, fitness, nutrition, and health. These concepts include: Your size and weight have nothing to do with your worth or value as a human being. All people deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. You can’t tell how healthy someone is just by looking at them. Weight is a marker of health, and excess weight can increase your risk of certain health conditions, but weight is not the only marker of health, nor is it always the most important one. Losing weight isn’t necessarily the healthiest goal for every person, including bigger-bodied people. And weight stigma is a public health issue.

Some people argue that it is unethical to report information about how to lose weight at all. There’s evidence that, in the long run, diets often fail. We know that simply telling people to lose weight isn’t usually the most effective way to help people actually lose weight or improve their health—and that shaming people doesn’t make them any healthier, and could very well be harmful to their mental and physical health.

We’re grappling with a few complicated questions here. Is it possible to report accurately on the health risks associated with carrying excess weight without perpetuating weight stigma? And is it possible to report on any kind of information about how to lose weight without perpetuating weight stigma? Some people don’t think so.

But a huge number of people do want to lose weight for a whole host of reasons, from aesthetic goals to genuine concern for their health. And there is a tremendous amount of dangerous misinformation and advice out there. Reporting accurate, safe, realistic information about weight, weight loss, and weight management can be a real service to people seeking clear answers amid a toxic and confusing stew of detox tea ads, fad cleanses, and the general nonsense that comes from eminence-based (rather than evidence-based) health advice.

We are committed to supporting bodily autonomy. No matter why someone wants to lose weight, they deserve access to accurate, truthful, shame-free information that can help them. Given our mission and values, we will continue to report information about weight loss and what the science and experts say about how to lose weight. But we will do our best to avoid perpetuating weight stigma where at all possible.

Here’s what that looks like.

Don’t assume that everyone wants to lose weight or change their bodies.
When reporting on weight loss or another form of body modification as a goal, try to couch with “if your goal is ______” [to lose weight, to have a six-pack, etc.]

When reporting on weight loss, diets, body modification, or fitness challenges, make clear that this information is not appropriate for everyone, and that it might be a good idea to consult with a healthcare provider if you have any questions.
As reporters, journalists, and editors, our role is to analyze the available research and interview qualified experts for their best advice, and then synthesize the information in a way that’s easy for people to understand. Health isn’t a one-size-fits-all thing, and while our reporting is sound and provides a good baseline of general information, it’s likely not going to apply to every single person, such as for people with underlying medical conditions, like a history of disordered eating.

Only use the terms “overweight” and “obesity” when referring to specific medical conditions in the context of providing public health-related information.
People frequently use “obesity” and “overweight” in stigmatizing and offensive ways. There are unfortunately no other terms that can accurately describe these specific medical conditions or health markers, as defined by body mass index, and used commonly in the scientific literature. When it’s possible to use other terms without sacrificing specificity or accuracy in our reporting, we will use those instead. And, though it’s significantly less stigmatized, we will also only be using “underweight” in the same medical context.

If it’s necessary to describe a person’s body size or type, use their preferred descriptor if possible.
E.G. fat, small fat, curvy, thick, plus size, bigger bodied

Avoid derogatory terms to describe body parts.
E.G. saddlebags, cankles, bat wings, spare tire, bra bulge, muffin top

Avoid implying that a person has to look a certain way or be a certain size to wear specific clothing or participate in specific activities.
E.G. Bikini body, beach body, tank top arms

Be specific and accurate when discussing the connection between weight and health.
We have an extensive primer on the research; link to it whenever it contextually makes sense.

When reporting on eating disorders or disordered eating behavior, adhere to recommendations from the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) for responsible media coverage.

When reporting on weight loss or other body fat composition goals, do your best to provide thorough context about what goes into losing weight, the cultural forces motivating a person to want to lose weight, and the fact that weight loss can be really hard and maintaining weight loss even harder.
Providing context is crucial: Explain that weight and weight loss are impacted by a variety of factors, including sleep, stress, hormones, medications, other health conditions, access to healthy foods, affordability, and other things that may be outside of someone’s control. Provide cultural context when possible as well, especially when discussing a person’s motivation to lose weight or change their body shape. Avoid promising or implying that a person can expect specific weight loss or body modification results in a set period of time, or that they can look like a celebrity (or get the body parts of a celebrity) simply by doing specific workout moves or eating specific foods. And make it clear that losing weight or focusing on weight loss isn’t right for everyone and can potentially be harmful, particularly for anyone with underlying health conditions, including a history of disordered eating.

We have really excellent 101-style reported articles about these topics, and our editors should link to them freely and frequently: Why Weight-Loss Diets Fail, So, You Want to Lose Weight and Keep It Off, and I Lost 90 Pounds. Maintaining That Weight Loss Was Harder.

When reporting on celebrity health, nutrition, or fitness choices, behavior, or statements, consult with actual experts and evidence-based research to provide appropriate context and information.
Celebrities are not health experts. But they are often in the news for the things they say and do related to health, fitness, and nutrition. A lot of people find this stuff interesting and potentially helpful. When reporting on celebrity-related information, always speak with qualified experts and refer to any relevant research.

Be cautious not to imply that it’s possible to look like a celebrity by doing a specific thing that a celebrity does. It’s unrealistic and very likely untrue. When reporting on celebrity fitness routines in particular, address this misconception directly and make it clear that’s not what you’re implying.

A quick note about debunking inaccurate celebrity health advice: We tend to shy away from doing debunkers every time a celebrity says something wrong. For starters, the original bad health information generally spreads significantly faster and farther than debunkers do. Furthermore, there’s some concern that repeating the bad information, even in the context of providing facts that prove it wrong, might introduce people to the bad idea in the first place, and/or may actually reinforce belief in the factually incorrect statement. It’s not a hard and fast rule, but we generally choose to do debunkers when the story is already really huge and we think that enough people are Googling it or familiar with it.

When reporting on weight loss, be clear that there is no “best” diet for weight loss.
The general consensus about weight loss and diets shows that there is no one diet or weight loss method that is superior to any other in terms of efficacy. For people who successfully lose weight, the best “diet” is the one that you can actually stick to. For people who successfully are able to maintain weight loss, the key has been a total lifestyle overhaul that they can live with while still enjoying their lives. It’s not sexy, it doesn’t make good headlines, and it’s important that we don’t complicate it much more than that. See our primer, So, You Want to Lose Weight and Keep It Offfor more information.

Avoid reporting on one-off nutrition studies as the basis for a story.
We generally avoid reporting on one-off studies. With nutrition and weight-loss science, that’s even more critical—there’s already so much confusing noise out there, and it can result in people having absolutely no idea what healthy eating even means, or how to have a healthy relationship with food.

When reporting on “cleanses,” “detoxes,” weight loss teas, OTC weight loss supplements, and diuretics, be explicit about how those approaches can be harmful and that experts advise strongly against them. Discourage these approaches in unequivocal terms.

Avoid assigning moral value to food choices or demonizing any types of food groups.
Some examples: Food isn’t good or bad, sugar is not toxic or addictive, GMOs aren’t harmful to your health, most people can tolerate gluten just fine, and you aren’t misbehaving or deserving of punishment when you eat something high in calories, fat, carbohydrates, sugar, and so on. Avoid the term “clean eating” because it perpetuates this idea that if some food is “clean,” the opposite kind of food must be “dirty.”

When reporting on any type of particular specialty diet, provide necessary context up front about potential risks and sustainability.
You may have noticed that people have very strong opinions about carbohydrates and fat, especially lately (hello, Keto).

We’ve discussed a lot internally about whether it’s OK to report on specific diets, like paleo, intermittent fasting, Keto, low-carb, Whole30, and so on, or provide recipes that are compatible with these diets, given everything we know about weight loss, health, and how dieting is often unsustainable. We’ve come down on the side that we will continue doing so, for the same reasons that we will continue reporting on weight loss. But in any story referring to those specific diets we should include all relevant contextual information about sustainability and risks, as well as the other information we provide about weight loss as a goal in general. That means we should also include the information that nutrition experts generally discourage the wholesale elimination of entire nutrients or food groups from your diet without consulting with a healthcare professional first.

Additionally, when reporting on specific diets, we should point to the evidence that multiple types of diets (for example, low-carb and low-fat) can potentially work for weight loss, and, again, if your goal is weight loss, the best diet is the one that works best for you.

When talking about exercise and fitness, avoid framing it in a way that makes it sound like weight loss is the best reason to work out, and avoid positioning exercise as a form of punishment or atonement for caloric consumption.
First, research points to the fact that exercise alone isn’t a sufficient method of trying to lose weight. Exercise can contribute to weight loss in that some people who begin to exercise will also modify their food intake for a variety of reasons, which can then lead to weight loss. But for many people, exercising can actually cause a slight increase in caloric consumption, which mitigates any extra calories burned while working out. So talking about exercise as if it’s going to help someone lose weight, without providing a huge amount of context, is misleading.

More importantly, there are a ton of really good health-related reasons to work out that have nothing to do with weight loss. It’s one of the best things most people can do for their health, both mental and physical. We don’t want to reinforce the idea that exercise is a chore or something that you have to do as penance or punishment for eating food.

When publishing or promoting fitness or nutrition challenges, be explicit about what a participant can and cannot expect to get out of it.Challenges should focus on forming healthy habits, or challenging yourself with something new and enjoyable. Fitness and nutrition challenges should not promote weight loss or promise weight loss as a benefit, and we should be clear that—especially with a fitness challenge that doesn’t come with a nutrition component—weight loss likely won’t happen. All fitness and nutrition challenges should come with clear language indicating that people with underlying medical conditions, particularly a history of disordered eating, should consult with a healthcare professional before participating.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR IMAGERY AND PACKAGING

Representation matters. Wellness should be accessible to everyone, and in order for people to feel comfortable engaging with the brand, they need to feel welcome in the wellness arena. So we’re making an intentional effort to be significantly more inclusive with our visuals.

We primarily use stock images from a subscription service for most of the images on our content. Wherever possible, our photo editors know to select stock photos that show a broad diversity of people—race, gender presentation, body size, age, and ability. Unfortunately, there aren’t a ton of options for diverse stock photos that also aren’t totally cheesy and ridiculous, or don’t perpetuate harmful stereotypes (for example, a bigger bodied woman crying on the scale). So we’ve created some inclusive stock photography of our own. So far we’ve shot three separate original stock photo shoots over the past year and a half, and we plan to shoot more. It doesn’t solve the challenge entirely, but it does chip away at it.

Additionally, we’re overhauling how we produce our regular workout content going forward. While we used to rely exclusively on fitness models and trainers to demonstrate exercise moves, we recently held a casting call for everyday (non-model) fitness enthusiasts. We received hundreds of responses, and recently shot over 25 workouts, which we’ll be rolling out on a regular basis for the rest of the year. We plan to do it again in the future. We will continue to use fitness models, celebrities, and trainers in some of our fitness content, but these everyday athlete shoots will help us greatly improve the diversity of our fitness offering.

Beyond these steps, here are additional recommendations for imagery and packaging.

Images or image collections should be diverse and inclusive.
When a picture or editorial package has art with multiple people in it, make the best effort possible to show different types of people, especially with regard to race, body type, size, and ability. For individual stories with one picture, be mindful of the photo selections for stories published shortly before and shortly after, given how they’ll appear on the site clustered close together.

Avoid editing photos to change the size or shape of a person’s body, or to remove cellulite or stretch marks.
It’s important to show people as they are, and not perpetuate the idea that a digitally altered body is either ideal or possible to achieve. We will continue to edit photos for lighting, styling, and light general clean-up purposes, but photo editing should not be done to change the way a person looks.

Avoid publishing before-and-after weight loss pictures.
It’s not our place to tell people what pictures they should and should not post of themselves, or that they shouldn’t feel proud of themselves for setting a goal and working hard to accomplish it. But as a health media brand, SELF should avoid posting these types of photos. It’s important that we do what we can to avoid promoting the idea that there’s an ideal body type, that you can tell how healthy someone is just by looking at them, or that the most important thing about a person or their health journey is the way their body looks. Many of the times, these photos can send the opposite message.

Avoid graphic pictures of the bodies of people in the midst of an eating disorder.
This is one of several NEDA recommendations about how to report responsibly on disordered eating. The images can be extremely triggering to other people with or in recovery from eating disorders. It also sends the message that you can tell if someone has an eating disorder just by looking at them, which isn’t true.

Avoid photos that graphically or intentionally dramatize thinness.
E.G. protruding ribs or pelvic bones

Fetishizing or dramatizing thinness can have public health implications, particularly among people who have eating disorders or are at risk or or in recovery from eating disorders.

You can’t tell how healthy or unhealthy a person is by how they look, and we’re not policing what kind of bodies are OK to have. We want to portray a range of body types, which can and should include smaller and thinner bodies. This recommendation is meant to guide how to do so thoughtfully.

Use pictures of people from marginalized communities in all kinds of stories, not just those stories specifically about that group.
So, for example, don’t exclusively use images of people with bigger bodies in stories about living in a bigger body—make imagery for all content as diverse as possible, no matter what the story is about.

Avoid posting images of people from marginalized groups in exclusively negative or sad contexts.
We want to avoid perpetuating the stereotype that people from marginalized groups live difficult, miserable lives—doing so further reinforces stigma that living with this identity is a bad thing. People with bigger bodies, for instance, experience joy, love, pleasure, fun, excitement, success, and happiness, just like people with smaller bodies do, and our creative choices should reflect that reality.

With fitness stories, avoid closely cropped pictures of abs, butts, arms, legs, and backs to accompany a corresponding body part workout.
The implication, even if not explicitly stated, is that if you do this workout you’ll get abs or a butt that looks like that. It’s not accurate or realistic to set an expectation like that. It also unhelpfully conflates exercise with body size or type, which is super oversimplified. And then there’s the issue that this type of disembodiment is typically associated with objectification, rather than experiencing someone as a complete human being. We’re all more than a sum of our parts.

This gets a bit more cerebral than you might expect, considering it’s a rule about close-cropped booty pics.

Our philosophy is one of bodily autonomy. You can do what you want to do with your body, and if your goal is to have a six-pack or a firm, round butt, that’s your call. Our role in this dynamic is to give you evidence-based information about what exactly you would need to do to accomplish that goal, and how to do it in a way that isn’t harmful to you, mentally or physically. That means that we should not imply in any way that it’s easy to accomplish these goals. And, beyond that, we also need to make clear that for some people (many people, actually), the work required may in fact not be worth the end result, in the sense that it can make you totally miserable and could actually be harmful. And also for some people, no matter how much work you put in, sometimes these physical attributes are genuinely impossible to achieve—see Why It’s So Hard—And Sometimes Impossible—to Get Six-Pack Abs for more on that if you’re curious.

Which brings us back to the close-cropped butt and abs shots on butt and abs workouts. If you want a six-pack that looks like those abs, you’re going to need to do a whole lot more than this one abs workout… and it still might not ever happen.

Avoid promoting weight loss content adjacent to content about body positivity or disordered eating.
This sends confusing and contradictory messaging. Additionally, there are people who want to engage with our content—particularly the content around body positivity and disordered eating—who don’t want to see any messaging at all related to weight or weight loss. From an editorial perspective, we should make an effort to avoid this type of overlap or adjacency wherever possible. But this is also a product challenge, in addition to an editorial and visual one—digital infrastructure and UX can impact messaging as well. To that end, we have been working with the product, engineering, and audience development teams to come up with solutions or approaches to addressing these challenges, and will continue to do so.

Avoid publishing information about how to lose weight on Snapchat Discover.
We have a huge audience on Snapchat Discover. The audience is significantly younger than the audience on other platforms, which makes sense, given that Snapchat has a young user base. Teenagers and young adults are particularly susceptible to messaging about dieting and weight loss, and also at high risk for developing eating disorders. We should continue to avoid publishing any weight loss content to this platform.

And finally, a word on old content that does not meet these standards:
These standards did not exist in one place, accessible to all people working on the brand, until this document was published. That means that we have published content for years that does not meet these standards—including possibly as recently as the day this style guide went up!

We have no plans to systematically update, fix, change, or remove old content that doesn’t meet these standards. We will do our best to meet these standards with all future work going forward, but acknowledge that we may make mistakes.

[“Source-self”]