INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RESEARCH AND INNOVATION IN SOCIAL SCIENCE (IJRISS)  
ISSN No. 2454-6186 | DOI: 10.47772/IJRISS | Volume IX Issue XI November 2025  
Social Media and the Cosmetic Body Culture Among Nigerian  
Women  
Abdullateef Adeniyi Onabanjo1, Abimbola Ebunoluwa Akinmoladun2, Comfort Oyinlola Oyafunke-  
Omoniyi3  
1Department of Sociology, Hallmark University, Ijebu-Itele, Ogun State, Nigeria.  
2,3Department of Sociology, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State, Nigeria  
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2025.91100315  
Received: 22 November 2025; Accepted: 28 November 2025; Published: 09 December 2025  
ABSTRACT  
This paper examines how social media influences cosmetic body culture among Nigerian women, focusing on  
the interaction between digital beauty standards and local cultural norms. Drawing on a conceptual review and  
sociological theories such as Symbolic Interactionism, Foucault’s disciplinary power, Bourdieu’s cultural  
capital, and Goffman’s dramaturgy, the study explains how platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook  
promote idealised images of slimness, lighter skin, and enhanced body shapes. These digital portrayals intensify  
social comparison, body dissatisfaction, and pressures to conform to globalised beauty practices, including skin  
lightening and cosmetic surgery.  
The review also highlights how Nigerian women negotiate these ideals, blending Westernised aesthetics with  
indigenous perspectives, particularly Yoruba epistemologies that link physical appearance with moral and  
spiritual identity. Intersectional factors; gender, class, and age; further shape women’s experiences of beauty and  
cosmetic consumption, while the psychological implications include lowered self-esteem, anxiety, and  
heightened self-surveillance. Ethical concerns related to body commodification, inequality, and unregulated  
cosmetic markets are identified.  
The paper concludes by emphasising the need for media literacy, culturally informed interventions, and  
regulatory frameworks to promote healthier beauty practices in Nigeria’s digital era.  
Keywords: Social Media, Cosmetic Body Culture, Nigerian Women, Beauty Ideals, Identity and Body Image  
INTRODUCTION  
Globally, social media has become a dominant cultural force in how people define their identity, lifestyle and  
consumption behaviour, especially in relation to body image and beauty standards (Tiggemann & Zaccardo,  
2018). However, platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube have revolutionised how beauty ideals are  
circulated and internalised and affect the practise of cosmetics around the world (De Vries et al., 2021). This  
digital influence is demonstrable not only at the West, but increasingly in Africa where social media is mediating  
the negotiation of modernity, aesthetics and gender identities (Onduru, 2023). In this context, in Nigeria, social  
media is an important site where the meeting of the social media users across the universe with cosmetic body  
culture is so vibrant and complex because it is home to a lot of young population and increasing social media  
penetration (Nielsen, 2025).  
Conversely, in Nigeria, the cosmetic culture of the body is so fast changing in the face of both global and local  
cultural issues as well as dual pressures - global standards of beauty and vivid female characteristics. Cosmetic  
improvements, skin bleaching, body contouring, and aesthetic surgery have become popular, which shows not  
only the desires of society as a whole, but also the internalised aspirations fueled by digitalisation (Eze, 2025).  
Social media platforms have emerged as major ways in which Nigerian women engage with beauty trends,  
celebrity endorsements, and peer influences and have a profound effect on how they view the 'ideal' body (Okeke  
& Okoye, 2025). For instance, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok appear to have a significant impact on Nigerian  
young women's procuring plans for cosmetic products and elective procedures (Chukwuemeka & Ezeani, 2025).  
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Moreover, the use of social media glamorises evident aesthetic practises, such as skin snowing, with  
ramifications psychological, identity (Nwosu, 2025).  
Despite these trends, there has been little academic focus on the sociological implications on women's cosmetic  
body culture in Nigeria as portrayed in social media. There is a need to conceptually map the interactions between  
social media-driven and conventional lines of beauty, traditional gender roles, power relations and cultural  
capital in Nigeria. The problem is not only approximately individual choices but is much more widely around  
broader socioeconomic processes like the body regulation and identity performance through the mediation of  
digital technology (Enyinnaya, 2025). This paper tends to carry out conceptual review in a bid to systematically  
explore the sociological perceptions that collectively enlighten people on understanding the dynamics of the  
cosmetic body culture among Nigerian ladies during the social media era.  
However, this paper synthesizes some of the prominent sociological theories, notably Foucault's conceptions of  
disciplinary power, Bourdieu's definition of cultural capital, as well as Goffman's notion of presentation of the  
self. This review situates cosmetic body culture within the complex social and cultural landscape of Nigeria. It  
illuminates the role of social media as one of empowerment and constraint, affecting desires, behaviours, and  
social inequalities of female embodiment. The end result of this paper will lead towards understanding in greater  
dimensions the intersection of global digital culture in localized social realities in the formation of the bodies  
and identities of Nigerian women.  
LITERATURE REVIEW  
Sociocultural Context of Cosmetic Body Culture in Nigeria  
The sociocultural experience of cosmetic body culture in Nigeria is embedded in the complex historical,  
ethnoclass process of Nigerian sociocultural ideologies which predates the usage and mobilisation of social  
media. Moreover, contextualising modern-day occurrences within the sublimations of such a layered edifice of  
sign and practise is important in creating meaning for the peculiar norms around beauty, body aesthetics and  
gender roles in Nigeria.  
Historically, the classification frame of beauty in Nigeria was guided by indigenous Cultural ideals with a high  
standard of harmony and balance of physical attributes. In the Igbo ethnic group, for example, beauty has  
traditionally been defined as harmony between physical attractiveness and moral goodness, with light skin tones  
highly advised of unions in marriage, and expensive bride prices. This bias is evidenced in the philosophy of the  
Igbo Afrikaners which does not define beauty as being just physical but also socially valued and harmonious (O  
mma Arabic meaning physical beauty) (Osaghae, 2019). Furthermore, before colonialism, body adornments  
including scarification, jewellery, and ethnicity aesthetics were being imposed on Nigerian societies without any  
shame; free from social stigmas in needless expression, such body adornments denoted beauty, status, and  
identity human diversity and without hypocrisy (Balogun, 2024).  
However, the history of colonialism brought about a lot of changes to these indigenous beauty standards.  
Eurocentric standards of beauty promoted by colonialism that favours lighter skin, straight hair, and slim body  
types while discouraging features of Africans (Balogun et al., 2025). More importantly, the idea of colourism -  
the overtly preferential treatment accorded white-skinned people in the African population and systematically  
reproduced through the mechanism of social and hierarchies in economic relationships - is now unambiguously  
hypothecated in the legacy of the Colonial era. With extensive influences of Euro-centrism themes linking lighter  
complexion to social status, economic opportunities, and intellectual aptitude, colourism flourishes in acting as  
the force for women in Nigeria to embrace skin bleaching habits that seek to meet expectations for whiteness  
(Olumide, 2018).  
In Nigerian society, gender roles are an important determining factor in the expectations of beauty. The social  
value of women is generally related to a woman's physical appearance and observance of the cultural ideals of  
beauty, which are closely monitored and controlled by the family and the community (Balogun, 2024). The  
patriarchal structure emphasises pressures on role of women to fulfill aesthetic standards to increase  
marriageability and social acceptability. Hence, cosmetic body culture is thus a place to negotiate one's identities  
and social capital in a battle between traditional expectations and new influences.  
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Consequently, the natural intersection of ethnicity and gender proxies itself in different ideals of body image  
between the different ethnic groups in Nigeria, but the underlying model of beauty is a binary of favouring lighter  
skin among women, a flaw that is imbued with attributes of desirability and earning higher bride prices among  
the Igbo in particular (Osaghae, 2019; Olumide, 2018). These norms have long been internalised and have not  
only led to the feeling of the character and family, but also influenced the craze for modern-day cosmetic  
practises.  
Conversely, social class is another reason why Nigeria's cosmetic body culture is all mixed up. Urban elites and  
middle classes have higher access to global beauty products and beauty media through which to approximate  
and reproduce "global" beauty standards based on western ideals (Balogun-Mwangi, 2023). Furthermore, this  
keeps society perpetuated because the appropriation of beauty, according to class, reinforces the stratification of  
society through the fact that improved cosmetic appearance and body alteration becomes a standard of cultural  
capital level and social distinction, following Bourdieu's theory (Balogun-Mwangi, 2023).  
Conversely, less elegant women also interact differently with the cosmetic body culture; sometimes face a  
restriction within the formal frames of the beauty markets and thus case beauty within the meanings of the local  
reality. The skin bleaching epidemic in Nigeria, valued could be billions of dollars, highlights the exploitation  
of the beauty insecurity in the capitalist structure especially among women who are in need of moving up their  
social class by justifying Eurocentric beauty aesthetic (Balogun et al., 2025; Olumide, 2018).  
Role of Social Media in Shaping Body Aesthetics  
Social media has emerged as a key channel in spreading and normalising the modern standard of cosmetic  
projection which has a serious influence on body aesthetics perception among Nigerian women. Social media,  
specifically Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, contribute to promoting a visual culture that serves as a bubble  
for quick spread of unrealistic beauty standards marked by slim physique, light complexions, and certain facial  
profiles more similar to the West (InsightSpice, 2024; Sanzari et al., 2023). This often times leads to  
disagreements with the classic Nigerian beauty standard, leading to discord and pressures to conform to such  
increasingly internationalised standards (InsightSpice, 2024).  
However, understanding the view of social media as being visual contributes to heightening the importance of  
physical appearance. Image-based sharing sites have adopted a superior importance of visual-related content,  
having utmost fitness, weight loss, and beauty topics thriving on feeds (Sanzari et al., 2023). The depiction of  
slender and fairer-skinned models in fashion media has led to the internalisation of narrow standards of beauty,  
the popularity of skin lightening products and bleaching, popularising them in Nigeria, as this is a reflection of  
the commoditisation of 'whiteness' as a commodity (Olatunji & Ayandele, 2025; InsightSpice, 2024). Influencer  
marketing contributes to this trend by reinforcing these ideals through influencing and showcasing influencers  
and celebs promoting products that offer transformation or enhancement tied to them (Olatunji et al., 2025).  
Basically, influencers have a major impact on how beauty standards are defined by being inspirational role  
models who create trends that are quickly picked up by their followers. Using images that are curated and  
expressed through lifestyle reveals the peer validation cycle through which desirability of aesthetic values is  
bolstered which achieves further normalising of these beauty standards (InsightSpice, 2024). For instance, people  
especially young Nigeria women use social media to make social comparisons with others, leading to decreased  
body satisfaction and increased body dissatisfaction (Sanzari et al., 2023; Modrzejewska, 2022). The urge to  
perfect these appearances is further amplified by the influence of social media trends, which quickly circulate  
and change from one side of the internet to the other (InsightSpice: 2024).  
Invariably, social currency, which operates via social platforms where popularity appeals to users through likes,  
comments, and shares, was another way in which beauty standardisation was normalised; achieving likeability  
encourages the user to reproduce the beauty ideals to achieve social acceptance and popularity. Likes, comments,  
and shares in social platforms also encourage users to reproduce ideals of beauty in exchange for social mileage  
as a social currency (InsightSpice 2024). This blinding validation system is renowned for the patriarchal  
enforcement and superficial enhancement of looks while undermining the authentic expression of body  
positivity.  
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However, the swiftness of online communication means facts about beauty travel an average consumer instantly,  
via the ability to share through social media platforms; they are able to jump from an exotic locale with (or even  
without) photographs to ticket into the standard aesthetics of mainstream living within just a few seconds. The  
"Clean Girl Aesthetic," with its emphasis on simplicity and neatness, reflects the impact that viral beauty  
narratives can have on Lagos's women's preferences and practises (Rex Clarke adventures 2025). These trends  
gain a compound virality due to the algorithmic processes of recommendation systems pushing popular posts  
more and boosting trend usage across sharing boundaries and local cultural limits (Sanzari et al., 2023).  
Furthermore, social media is able to insert consumerism related to cosmetic products and procedures within the  
trends by encouraging the popularisation of the desired body image, which contributes to the cultural aspects of  
the cosmetic body in Nigeria (GML, 2025). This commercialisation is mixed up with identity politics and social  
mobility, as meeting the standards of beauty is often associated with having a more prestigious social standing.  
More importantly, social media platforms are playing a pivotal role in the construction and consumption of body  
aesthetics among Nigerian women by predatory beauty trends, visual cultures, influence, peer certification, and  
beauty virality. Rather than exposing people to the full spectrum of beauty, these platforms perpetuated narrow  
interpretations of beauty influenced by Westernised as well as local beauty standards and reinforced through  
social mechanisms that include rewards for conformity. These pressures have an impact on the body image and  
self-esteem and further contribute to a complex cultural context in which cosmetic body culture thrives.  
Theoretical Framework  
This theoretical conceit secures the study in key sociological perspectives that shed light on social media, body  
culture, and identity intersections of Nigerian women. The selection of theories - Symbolic Interactionism,  
Foucault's power and body discipline, Bourdieu's habitus and cultural capital, Goffman's dramaturgy - provide  
a rich lensing of the processes of meaning making, power regulation, social class influences, and the performance  
of identity in the context of cosmetic culture mediated through the social media.  
Symbolic Interactionism places a strong emphasis on the active way that individuals both create and interpret  
meanings in the context of social interactions (including social interactions mediated through media symbols).  
In the context of the social media and the body cosmetic culture, Nigerian women partake in continuous social  
interaction where the body becomes the location of exchange of symbolic communication. Through social media  
such as Instagram and TikTok cosmetic alterations and beauty ideals are portrayed and wrangled as something  
everyone acknowledges as a shared denotation about what they self-assemble and what constitutes the group  
identity (e.g., Melewar & Chhabra, 2024). The digital environment caters for continuous interaction where  
meanings around the concept notion of beauty are co-constructed, contested and reinforced (Charmaz, 2023).  
This theory draws its focus on the fluid and dynamic nature of identity as performed and recognised in social  
media spaces.  
On one hand, Foucault's interpretation of power and body discipline begins to provide an analysis of how social  
media operates as a self-surveillance, a regulation mechanism. Embracing the ideas of panopticism by Foucault,  
and the disciplinary power, the social media agencies could be viewed as the digital arenas where Nigerian  
women internalise the rules of beauty concerning the chasing of cosmetic bodily concepts and mirroring  
themselves in those lines (Ahmed & Alade, 2025). The 'gaze' is internalised, encouraging conformity based on  
beauty standard expectations via constant visibility, feedback, and comparison on the internet. This self-  
discipline is worsened by the algorithmic gaze alongside peer validation, and this leads to the normalisation of  
the ways of transforming the body and the consumption of some form of cosmetics as a social discipline (Nkosi  
& Adeyemi, 2024).  
On the other hand, Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and cultural capital enhance the understanding of the effects  
of social class manifested in cosmetic body culture among Nigerian women. Habitus is used to describe "the  
embodied dispositions that are individualised by their incorporation into social conditions and the habitus that  
arise from those social conditions and the social conditions under which the person grew up and sometimes their  
tastes, preferences, and practises relating to beauty and cosmetic culture" (Kouchaki et al., 2020). Cultural capital  
in terms of knowledge, skills, and aesthetic disposition also structures access to and engagement with cosmetic  
products and social media beauty trends. In the Nigerian society, social class affiliation is manifested in  
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differentiated participation in cosmetic culture, where the choice to utilise cosmetic consumption or access the  
cosmetic culture may be a choice of women who have higher socio-economic background in such society but  
others may choose such cosmetic culture as aspirational (Ehlert, 2021).  
Invariably, Goffman's dramaturgical approach of social media envisages a stage of identity performance and  
impression management, which happens constantly. Nigerian women curate their online personas, presenting  
idealised identities to their content consumers using the cosmetic body culture as props and costumes. Through  
the strategically crafted self-presentation based on selective disclosure and the visual framing of beauty,  
individuals control impressions and gain social capital or acceptance or status. The performative nature of social  
media fits in with Goffman's understanding that identity is a continuous project that is negotiated in front of  
(spectator's) audience with cosmetic body being an important part of the performed femininity of social  
belonging.  
Convincingly, these sociological theories taken jointly understand the significance of social media in shaping  
the cosmetic body culture of Nigerian women as a process of meaning making, power regulation, class-based  
practise and identity performance. Symbolic Interactionism theorises the process of social cultural construction  
of meanings around beauty; Foucault sees systems of self-discipline and normative scourging; Bourdieu  
describes cosmetic practise as social hierarchies; and Goffman selfishly unveils the performance and strategy of  
identity in the digital public sphere. This integrative theoretical framework has provided an excellent base to  
analyse the mediating relationship of social media to the cosmetic body culture among Nigerian women.  
Internalization and Negotiation of Beauty Ideals by Nigerian Women  
Unraveling the involvement of Nigerian women within the culturally mediated beauty norms of social media,  
internalization, conformity, and resistance are shown to have a dynamic entanglement with the workings of  
identity construction and processes of cultural negotiation. Basically, social media platforms, specifically  
Instagram have become crucial venues where Nigerian women negotiate and manipulate presiding beauty norms,  
which are a product of both the Western globalized norms and indigenous cultural aesthetic (Enyinnaya, 2025).  
Moreover, exposure of Nigerian women to beauty ideals through the digital medial forms substantial  
internalization of these ideals such that universal standards for beauty (be it light complexion, slim figure and  
fair distance in the face) have been widely imbibed as models to be emulated (Glaser, 2024). Hence, it echoes  
what has previously been seen in other places, in terms of social media pushing hegemonic beauty onto people  
through persuasive depictions and interactions, indoctrinating women into remaining within a set of norms to  
stay in social capital and to function as influencers and sources of information. This internalisation, for  
economically deprived Nigerian women interacts with social and economic structures, manifesting as a beauty  
tax, where the quest for "aesthetic perfection" suggests a financial burden that increases instability without  
displacing it, while still being an important entity of self-power and social mobility (Rpublc, 2025). Moreso, this  
dovetails with feminist insights on disciplinarity and self-surveillance, where women monitor their own  
appearance in order to conform to external looking as well as the setting up of self-worth and in doing so  
reinforcing patriarchy-established beauty regimes (Bartky, cited in Rpublc, 2025).  
However, the history of engagement of women from Nigeria with the standards of beauty is not entirely a storey  
of passive adoption. A number of studies point to active negotiation and resistance processes through which the  
women strive to re-appropriate and reposition beauty ideals within their socio-spiritual lives in culturally specific  
contexts. Accordingly, Enyinnaya (2025) reports that Igbo women fashion designers use Instagram not only to  
present themselves, but also to provide cultural reclamation spaces and support the priori indigenous aesthetic  
expressions such as Nsibidi ideograms to resist imperatives of western beauty regimes. The Iranian cyberspace  
activity of Nigerian reception is, in fact, an illustration of the hybrid nature of identity construction, which  
Nigerian women portray in a pluralist sense of being that harmonises the global forces with the local traditions.  
Furthermore, identity crafting in the context of social media participation is an intricate negation of femininity,  
entrepreneurship and agency. Enyinnaya (2025) postulate that the ICY signalling game has trained women of  
Nigeria to appropriately develop their online persona- profiles so that they can assert their cultural pride,  
contradict stereotypes and build communal relationships based on beauty and fashion. This period is not  
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restricted to aesthetics, but it covers the pulverized of economic capital, making cosmetic body culture an agent  
of communal entrepreneurship and empowerment in a gendered digital economy (Enyinnaya, 2025).  
Social media platforms on the other hands make these processes possible by helping to form specific  
performances through affordances that prioritise performative self-presentation, audience construction, and  
norm propagation. However, high-resolution images, communicating rudiments, and algorithmic algorithms,  
while reinforcing unconventionalities to broadly acknowledged definitions of beauty, provide the apparatus for  
disobedience and alternative narratives (Glaser 2024). An example of this contradiction is Nigerian women's use  
of Instagram: as some conform to globalised beauty regimes to better sell to the market, others engender  
feminisms of resistance, create counter discourses, and negotiate hybrid identities that refuse a beautified human  
template (Enyinnaya, 2025).  
More importantly, research on appearance ideals in general found evidence of negotiation mechanisms where  
women selectively adopt or resist societal ideals according to intertwined identities and social-cultural systems  
(Xiao & Wang, 2021). Mainly, these theoretical ontologies highlight how internalization of beauty norms  
arbitrates tensions between ambivalence and objectification, and therefore differentially influences women's  
ability to resist, as well as their sense of self.  
Intersectionality: Gender, Class, and Age in Cosmetic Body Culture  
Intersectionality is a critical analytical framework that offers a way of understanding the ways that different  
social identities intersect to produce lived experiences and push people to the margins. Application of  
intersectionality within the context of cosmetic body culture are used to explain how the relationship between  
gender, class, and age structuration plays a role in shaping body image and preference in the practise of cosmetic  
culture among women, in both the Nigerian and international space.  
Intersectionality on one hand does not see body image within the context of contemporary culture as existing in  
isolation but rather as the combined effects of multiple social identities. Gryphon (2022) emphasises how bodies  
of race, gender, class, age, etc. come together to create body positivity discourses and the beauty politics beneath  
it to point to how minoritized identities face their own battles in navigating beauty standards. It is a complex  
stress that is also present across civilizations where, because of colonial histories and media dynamics from  
around the world, there are entrenched notions of beauty that individuals today feel compelled to live up to.  
The ways social media contributes to these pressures include by spreading hegemonic facets of beauty that  
revolve around youth, slimness, and skin shade - all of which are perceived to be implicitly created by  
Eurocentric ideals (Johnston, 2025). Therefore, for women in Nigeria who interact with global and local social  
media spaces, it comes with a system of beauty that appreciates certain aesthetics while excluding others. This  
interface intensifies for women with intersecting marginalised individualities - women with minority identities  
may experience increased body displeasure and heaviness to fit in through cosmetic enhancement (Rodgers et  
al., 2023).  
Conversely, claiming a larger share of the media's focus and discursive emphasis of body obsession, women are  
overwhelmingly addressed when thinking about the body; women are disproportionately addressed to spend  
their resources on bodily capital through available products and procedures. Mears (Johnston, 2025) claims the  
gendered imperatives measured on the fact that women are pushed to become beautiful because it promises  
social and economic capital, whereas men are subject to less pressure in the same direction. The public disclosure  
of plastic surgeries by celebrities and influencers (e.g., Toke Makinwa, Ini Edo, and Bobrisky), are gendered and  
performative aspects of body-affecting in these local public fora and shape aspirational models of beauty  
(Nwadialor, 2025).  
Furthermore, the body shaming and gendered look-copies that women receive online makes conformity to  
restrictive norms more difficult to escape social claims from being different. Social media sites are therefore  
both sites of empowerment and constraint where ideals about the body are both promoted and challenged  
(Dosekun 2022).  
Casting one's socioeconomic status grades in, access to cosmetic practises focused on the body is given and this  
position relates to beauty ideals and how they are experienced and interrogated in relation to the kind of body  
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one wishes to develop. Theorists like Johnstone (2025) who research intersectionality topics have pointed to the  
importance of class being a societal component of beauty regimes and how they affect who is able to access  
beauty regimes and restraint from them. In Nigeria, there are some socioeconomic variances that influence the  
economic affordability and social acceptability of cosmetic interventions which create class-based differences  
in participating in body culture (Nwadialor, 2025).  
Moreover, this dynamic is in agreement with the general determinants that working-class women are prone to  
assess higher pressures and insecurities compared to their affluent counterparts with respect to ageing and  
appearance, due to a range of factors including but not limited to having more means to prevent the effects of  
appearance pressures (Aberg 2020). Hence, class, gender, and age all influence that complicated space of  
cosmetic body culture.  
Age is another intersecting identity that influences body image and cosmetic culture of the body. Studies  
illustrate that younger women are more susceptible to social media's unrealistic and sexualising images in general  
(Rodgers et al, 2022), whilst older women, particularly those from a lower socio-economic group, can be  
community-shunned with the compounding issues of age-related stigma and loss of confidence (Berg, 2020;  
Holman, 2020). It has swayed cosmetic use because women engage in beauty work to resist the effects of age  
on their beauty capital.  
In the Nigerian setting, observable culturally-based younger-established norms and venera interplay with  
globalised beauty ideals to create specific pressures for Nigerian women to use cosmetic enhancement to allow  
them to look younger (Nwadialor 2025). In this manner, age interacts with gender and with class in order to  
produce a specific and particular cosmetic body culture.  
However social media is playing a significant role in this intersectional dynamic. Influenced by the aesthetic  
culture on social media, where celebrity status, influencers, and media have the power to shape and promote  
unrealistic views of beauty and therefore consuming the media results in a constant sense of dissatisfaction with  
the body and a higher consumption of cosmetics (Johnston, 2025; Rodgers, 2022). In Nigeria, social media is a  
site that transmits new aesthetic standards that bring in the clash between the traditional aesthetics, and the neo-  
normative ideas of followers of contemporary life that belong to a black world that is often Eurocenters and  
create venue for indigenous identity negotiations (Dosekun 2022; Nwadialor 2025).  
Conflicts around body shaming and cosmetic surgery experienced by a number of social media personalities in  
Nigeria are indicative of the long-standing contestations of contentious body idea to further reforms that define  
what the body should look and be, and the trend shown by social media is epitomised in this context (Nwadialor,  
2025).  
The intersectional approach expands knowledge beyond a singular identity category to shed light on the complex  
interaction of the gender, class, and age in distributing human body image and cosmetic body culture amongst  
the Nigerian women. Research has also shown that social media is influential platform where intersectional  
pressure play out and impact beauty standards, rituals, and experiences. The emerging research literature makes  
the need for an intersectional examination of cosmetic body culture in order to understand how Nigerian women  
negotiate and mediate competing aesthetics in an era of digital globalisation.  
Social Media’s Impact on Mental Health and Well-Being  
The pervasive growth of social media in Nigeria due to high penetration by smartphones and having access to  
the Internet has had a significant impact on the daily lives of youths, most particularly women, in terms of their  
body perception, self-esteem, and mental well-being (Maduka, 2025). Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter  
have become major battlegrounds for the proliferation of cosmetic body culture - where idealised notions of  
beauty are promoted but often incomprehensible to achieve. Thus, in this paper, the psychological consequences  
of body dissatisfaction, self-esteem, social comparison and possible mental health risks, in an online social  
environment on Nigerian women are critically discussed within the context of Nigerian society.  
Consequently, body dissatisfaction is one of the major psychosocial side effects that social media has brought in  
heightening poor self-comparisons and objectification in the minds of Nigerian women. Maduka (2025) points  
out that constant exposure to edited coded images that indicate an ideal body structure breeds a culture of social  
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comparison, resulting in increased body dissatisfaction among Nigerian young women. This is enhanced by the  
aesthetic body culture in media spaces such as Instagram, TikTok, etc. where algorithmic content is saturated  
with both optimise and beautification charms on the internet as an imitation of beauty, which only feeds wrong  
and unrealistic images of beauty standards (Maduka, 2025). Additionally, the socially network allows for an  
ongoing process where all are tailored to monitor themselves, leading to anxiety and need for social validation  
by way of likes and comments, thus resulting in poor body-image and dissatisfaction (Plackett et al., 2023).  
Basically, the connection between social media usage and self-esteem among women in Nigeria is still  
entrenched where social comparison is a significant process. A further instance of online social comparison is  
upward comparison in which users compare themselves to idealised, edited, or filtered images of other people's  
appearances, severely diminishing their self-worth and confidence (Maduka, 2025). Plackett et al. (2023)  
propose that such social comparisons are associated with depressive symptoms and low self-esteem, particularly  
when people are mere spectators when consuming social media content. On the other hand, Maduka (2025)  
opined that the manifestation of Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) similarly adds a layer of intricacy to this  
relationship, as it perpetuates anxiety and emotional torment linked to social media engagement. These harms,  
however, are balancing some treatment-intervention based, social media-based interventions that report potential  
efficacy to offset their impacts by encouraging mindfulness and alleviating unhealthy comparison behaviours  
(Plackett et al., 2023).  
The unhealthy and ill-advised perception by women, particularly Nigerian women, towards social media use has  
been linked with various potential adverse consequences beyond body image, which include anxiety, depression,  
and overall psychological distress (Maduka, 2025; Fashoto, 2025). The double-edged jeopardy of societal stigma  
over mental health in Nigeria and the lack of professional help needed to facilitate the recovery makes the mass  
of the crisis worse, with the individuals affected being alone (Maduka, 2025). Furthermore, women using social  
media are exposed to high burdens resulting from appearance-related cyberbullying and online harassment both  
amplified by mental health risks on platforms (Maduka, 2025). Also, social media skits and awareness campaigns  
on the platform have become culturally relevant ways to educate mental health education and depression therapy  
amongst Nigerian women, especially the younger age bracket, which underscores the risk and the usefulness of  
social media for mental wellness (Obiechina, 2023).  
The role of social media and the culture of female physicality in American mental health as it relates to Nigerian  
women are inextricably linked to culture and society at large. Similar to many other nations, mental health  
remains to be greatly stigmatised in Nigeria, while insufficient arrangement alongside low mental well-being  
literacy further complicate optimistic positive results for affected individuals (Maduka, 2025; Fashoto, 2025). In  
addition, the nature of the cosmetic image of the body in social media systems coincides with the socio-economic  
struggles of Nigerian women such as lack of employment or societal expectations, and justifies the psychological  
burden (Maduka, 2025). Despite these challenges, social media, if properly utilised, offers possibilities of social  
support, awareness, and empowerment through supportive interventions and mental health education (Obiechina,  
2023; Fashoto, 2025).  
Ethical and Societal Implications  
Nigerian female perspectives of beauty, identity, and social standing are greatly influenced by the diverse impact  
of cosmetic body culture, including deeply social media-related content and notions. The magnitudes of the  
occurrence on a wider scale raise ethical concerns about the commodification of the body, perpetuation of  
impractical beauty ideals, and the exacerbation of social inequalities.  
It's unquestionable that the commodification of female bodies is intensified through social media sites that  
commodify the idea of beauty, making it a marketplace under the influence of the commercial and social  
pressures. Commodification in the Nigerian context also collides with cultural ideologies and tradition where it  
often contradicts indigenous aesthetics like scarification and natural adornment which had rich cultural  
connection long before (Nwadialor & Adingwupu, 2025). The infiltration of Westernised beauty standards  
through social media and cosmetic surgery promotes challenge to the cultural preservation and sparks an ethical  
debate on the importance of not letting the societal habit further into the culture through the importance of beauty  
over cultural identity (Nwadialor & Adingwupu, 2025).  
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Additionally, the part special people and influencers encompassed in advancing these commodified ideals of  
beauty carry moral obligations. Their ratifications have frequently prolonged the idea of cosmetic enhancements  
and light skin preferences, affecting public opinions and possibly sanctioning practises that value external  
appearance over inner values and cultural authenticity (Nwadialor & Adingwupu, 2025).  
Social media gives unrealistic images of beauty by promoting digitally edit and surgically modified images and  
creates dissatisfaction and distorted self-bodies among Nigerian women. These deceptive ideals widely  
spearhead body unhappiness and normative dissatisfaction with organic body shapes and skins (Ejike, 2015;  
Balogun-Mwangi, 2023). The glorification and profit-making of lighter skin and thinner body ideals on these  
platforms, on the one hand, perpetuates psycho-emotional harms like self-esteem and body images, as most  
beauty ideals are not realistic for most people (Nwadialor & Adingwupu, 2025; Balogun-Mwangi, 2023).  
The influence of these unattainable standards creates a culture where one's look replaces real merit as a  
differentiator of social life in a negative way affecting the upholding of traditional values in Nigeria where self-  
acceptance and natural beauty was contended for as the value of being a human (Nwadialor & Adingwupu, 2025;  
Ejike, 2015).  
Even the innumerable ethical warning signs associated with cosmetic body culture cannot be distinguished from  
issues of social inequality. In addition, the strongly structured socioeconomic disparities in Nigeria define access  
to cosmetic procedures and products, so that these beauty enhancements remain largely accessible to the upper  
strata of the socioeconomic ladder, thus further reinforcing class displacement (Nwangwuo & Adingwupu,  
2025). Cosmetic marketing wallets marriages reinforces social class structures of the photosphere where the  
wealthy can easily align with social media skin beauty norms whereas the disenfranchised are left out or forced  
to align through unduly skin bleaching irrespective of the poisonous effects on their health (Nwadialor &  
Adingwupu, 2025).  
As a result, beautification and commodification process enhanced by social media cultivates the current existing  
disparities, where the beauty body culture becomes a space in which economic hegemony becomes a social  
currency and worth as an economic privilege (Nwadialor & Adingwupu, 2025).  
Yoruba Sociological Epistemology Perspective  
From the time immemorial, the Yoruba sociological epistemology involves indigenous knowledge systems,  
cultural values and philosophical understandings about human existence, social relations and body, which are  
passed down through mostly oral forms such as proverbs, Ifa corpus, oriki (praise poetry) and communal  
practises. This epistemological framework is critical to the understanding of body culture and social aesthetics  
in the Yoruba context which informs the contemporary issues such as cosmetic body culture influenced by social  
media of Nigerian women.  
Indigenous Knowledge on Body and Body Sizes  
Recent ethnographic research indicates that Yoruba indigenous knowledge provides a complex picture of body  
size in which neither large body size is always neither glorified nor small body size is excluded. For example,  
one 2023 study that used qualitative approaches discussed Yoruba concepts, Ifa literary corpus and proverbs  
about body sizes. The findings imply that Yoruba oral traditions celebrate big and small body sizes and address  
aspects of health and social functions without the inflexible preference over the other, as is the case in Western  
notions of body ideals. The corpus clearly were communicating that the body is an important social symbol, but  
the appraisal of body size is context-dependent and fluid (Ibrahim & Jegede, 2017).  
The Duality of Body and Spirit in Yoruba Thought  
Yoruba epistemology emphasise the indissolubility of the physical body (ara) and the spiritual self (emi, ori)  
both of which comprise personhood. The physical body is shaped by Orisanla (God of creation) and the  
ontological understanding of body and spirit is a holistic human conception that is peculiar to the Yoruba  
cosmology. This perspective affects attitudes towards the appearance and modification of the body with the  
assertion that physical beauty, external, has to be in agreement with spiritual and moral values. For instance, the  
dressing and presenting oneself, have serious moral derivation and are based on respecting the ethos (onta) of  
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Ọmọlufua (ideal man/woman) which dictates the social conducts in Yoruba communities (Kanu, Omojola, &  
Bazza, 2021).  
Epistemology and Social Relations  
Yoruba sociological epistemology is situated in social relations and community values. The idea of Aye (the  
physical world and one's engagement with it as an individual) serves to highlight ethical intentionality and  
relational personhood or ethical intentionality which designates the mode of perception and value of bodies in  
Yoruba society. Consequently, body culture is not an aesthetic individual decision but corresponded to  
communal values, spiritual correspondence, and social identity. This indigenous foundation offers an alternative  
to these modern-day globalised beauty pressures which are often amplified by social media (Fabiyi 2023).  
Relevance to Social Media and Cosmetic Body Culture  
This epistemological basis provides essential insight into how Yoruba women negotiate and sometimes resist  
dominant cosmetical body norms that are promoted on social media. While the social media projects mostly  
globalised the idea of beauty ideals, Yoruba epistemology reminds us of cultural frameworks that celebrate  
different body forms, and link physical form with spiritual and moral dimensions. This interplay affects the  
extent to which Nigerian women may internalise, adapt or question cosmetic body culture trends - an important  
consideration for sociological research into the influence of social media on body image (Ibrahim & Jegede,  
2017; Kanu et al. 2017).  
Key Recent Sources with Downloads  
Title  
Authors  
Year Summary  
Access  
Body Size in Indigenous Oral Ibrahim  
& 2017 Explores Yoruba concepts, Ifa corpus, jpanafrican  
body sizes, proverbs, balanced  
Knowledge  
Yorùbá  
among  
the Jegede  
appreciations on large and small  
bodies.  
The Human Person in Yoruba Kanu et al.  
Culture and Philosophy  
2021 Discusses dual physical and spiritual acjol  
conception  
of  
personhood;  
body  
associated with moral as well as  
spiritual.  
Technological Culture and the Oyinlade,  
2024 Discusses conflict between the Yoruba abjournals  
moral principles of how the body  
should be presented and modern  
influences such as technology and  
media.  
Challenge  
of  
Erosion  
of E.O.  
Yoruba Moral Standards  
Yoruba Ontology: A Critique Akomolafe,  
of the Conceptualization of M.A.  
Life and Death  
2016 Yoruba metaphysical body, soul and jpanafrican  
destiny view in holistic unity contrast to  
Cartesian dualism  
Harnessing  
Culture and Tradition in  
Nigeria  
the  
Yoruba Fabiyi  
2023 Discusses Yoruba cosmology, Aye apas  
concept and socio-cultural engagement  
that shapes the values attached to the  
body and appearance.  
Synthesis  
Yoruba sociological epistemology offers a socio-cultural rich framework for understanding body culture of  
Nigerian women. The indigenous oral knowledge and spiritual worldview are contrasted (and interact with)  
social media influences that promote often homogenised cosmetic ideals. This viewpoint is important in looking  
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into the negotiation of body picture, identity and cosmetic exercises in Nigerian society today, primarily in the  
face of social media's all-absorbing influence. This review presents a basis for research that looks at the influence  
of Yoruba women's cultural epistemology on their reception, interpretation, and in some cases contestation of  
cosmetic body culture propagated on digital platforms.  
Gaps in Literature and Directions for Future Research  
Notwithstanding the proliferation of academic research on issues of body image and cosmetic culture, there is  
still a gap in empirical studies relating directly to Nigerian women with respect to the intricacies of social media  
as a medium for development of the cosmetic culture of the body. Therefore, most existing research approaches  
generalisation from the results of western population or general African context without considering Nigerian  
delineation rather differences in sociocultural, economic, as well as ethnic diversity (Balogun-Mwangi, 2023).  
The interplay between old world beauty standards and new standards introduced through Western-implicated  
Helveticas on Instagram and Tiktok remains understudied, which opens a gap that restricts attempts to  
understand the particular pressures and accommodations Nigerian women face (InsightSpice, 2024).  
While the impact of social media is known to spread unrealistic and often unattainable beauty ideals but no  
attention is paid to the resultant psychological impact such as anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia and eating  
disorders on young people especially in Nigeria who are regularly exposed to the comparison scene in digital  
technology space (InsightSpice, 2024). Furthermore, there is a critical research gap with regards to  
cyberbullying, unhappiness about one's body and use of social media as a platform for roasting and cyber-  
bullying, as studies in this area have not been carried out in Nigeria online spaces.  
Nigerian women, in light of social media influences, are motivated to go for expensive cosmetic interventions,  
skin bleaching or surgical body enhancements which are too little documented in terms of the financial  
implications for affected women. The combined feature of economic dimension with linkages to an overarching  
capitalist and colonial legacy in beauty standards, however, is an incipient but poorly studied domain  
(PrimeProgressNG, 2025; RPUBLC, 2025).  
According to NU Research Process (2017), existing works on cosmetic culture among Nigerian women do not  
put much emphasis on longitudinal study design, or mixed methods research that can inform changing trends  
and causal relationships to better understand the essence of cosmetic culture among women. Inconsistent with  
the typical urban-national scale, the majority of the studies are quite localised and small-scale and thus lack the  
level of generalisation to Nigeria's various socio-ethnic and urban-rural conditions.  
Future research with strong empirical studies specifically addressing the interaction of social media, cultural  
identity, and cultural body among cosmetic culture in Nigeria is recommended. This necessitated the  
disaggregation of data by age conformation, region, socio-economic status, and ethnic groups to inaugurate  
differential impacts (Balogun-Mwangi, 2023). Over, in-depth qualitative research combined with quantitative  
surveys could be used to understand how beauty inspiration and methods of inspiration are negotiated by the  
women in Nigeria, and the part played by social media influencers.  
There is a need for careful studies on the mental health implications of social media body image of women in  
Nigeria. Studies may look into prevalence of body dissatisfaction, disordered eating, depressive symptoms, and  
resilience factors as social support systems and media literacy education (InsightSpice, 2024). Interactive science  
studies would be good to determine if media literacy learning programmes and community facilitation models  
are effective in shaping positive digital experiences.  
There is still work to be done on economic effects and social constructs of cosmetic body culture as financial  
hardship created through consumption of cosmetics can be examined in relation to problems of colonialism,  
race, and gender within the fast-changing local Nigerian society. One could conduct regulatory Good Practise  
(GP) Studies into respectful advertising (ethical marketing with regards to surgery and cosmetic products on  
social media channels (Rpublc, 2025; PrimeProgressNG, 2025) or within the less-regulated field of cosmetic  
products.  
Using digital techniques that are creative and favourite approaches in ethnography and sociology: mixed  
methods, longitudinal designs and digital narratives. It was suggested that the sample size for Nigeria be  
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increased and that they should obtain representative samples for each of the states in order to enhance  
generalizability as well as policy relevance (NU Research Process (2017). Feminist theories, Postcolonial  
theories, underpinned by technocultural theories, might offer the teacher a better understanding of the power  
dynamics involved in the Nigerian female's digital cosmetic self-presentation (Enyinnaya, 2025).  
Due to findings and reports by researchers, it is recommended that policy and community-based programme  
interventions for Nigerian women should be developed to strengthen media literacy skills to interrogate edited  
and unrealistic images in social media and minimise strenuous comparisons and foster optimal body image  
practises (InsightSpice, 2024).  
Robust regulatory essays associated with promotions and dispersion of cosmetic items by way of social media  
can return exploitation and health risk linked with unregulated skin versa-lightening and aesthetic surgical  
procedures (RPUBLC, 2025). Fostering positive social media communities that advocate for inclusive beauty  
standards and offer emotional support can balance the negative impacts of social media on users, such as  
cyberbullying and mental health issues (InsightSpice, 2024).  
CONCLUSION  
The exhaustive impact of social media interplay deeply with Nigeria female cosmetist's body culture vogue,  
scripting and curating the standards of beauty in profound manners. However, particular sociological theories,  
focusing on social comparison and agenda-setting, are found necessary to explain how exposure to photographic  
practises and celebrity ideologies on Internet image-shingles sites, such as Instagram, affect body satisfaction  
and self-concept. John et al., (2023) showed that thin and curvaceous standards perceived from social media  
exert conflicting impact on the body image of women in Nigeria. In addition, these findings show that social  
media offers not only a medium of aesthetic practise; it is a powerful socialising force, both eclipsing and  
complicating such beauty norms.  
The significance of sociological theory is in its ability to put these mediated beauty norms into context in relation  
to power structures and cultural expectations throughout wider society. Cultural containers also explain how  
such ideals are internalised and negotiated by subjects under the influence of local and global interpenetrations,  
showing that there is a digital construction as well as social embeddedness of the aesthetic culture of the body  
fit. This engagement for Nigerian women shows the tension between following globalised standards of beauty  
and the need to reaffirm a strong sense of indigeneity with social media playing a crucial role as both a location  
of contestation and conformity at the same time.  
These results have important implications for social change. By being aware of the societal impact of social  
media's prioritisation of a particular standard of beauty, it becomes possible to advocate for a shift towards more  
inclusive and diverse beauty standards that speak to the complex Nigerian cultural universe. Moreover,  
incorporating sociological theories into public health and education initiatives can instill a critical analysis in  
women of the content they encounter online, rejecting comparisons that are detrimental to themselves.  
Ultimately, developing media literacy and general cultural sensibility, a more inclusive ornamental space could  
be co-created and thus lead to a healthier range of self-esteem and social well-being for Nigerian women.  
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