Susie Orbach highlighted in her 1978 groundbreaking book “Fat is a Feminist Issue” how female identity is “hopelessly inextricable from body image” ; she”s recently updated the introduction to this book indicating how things haven”t changed all that much, well actually ..they”ve been getting much worse.
An interesting analysis of social construction of body image. I think one thing i”d like to highlight here is the circularity of such social construction. say if you happen to be female and have somehow managed to defeat all this social pressure and expectations to behave in a particular way -and are not particularly bothered with the way you look - aha! what then? - say in the online medium, where no one can see what you look like - people will still expect a character to have a “feminine” identity, and there will be some expectation re: association with body image. This can range from all sorts of thinking like. either you”re a “silly girl” and will be fluffy, and project some kind of feminine physique across the online medium ( say with your photo or giggles on the page) and if you don”t do that -well - you must be a man or you”re an ugly woman. ( heh heh)
Okay so it”s not like that”s the only idea floating around just as well!) but you do come across it still. Analysing the Internet as a gendered space is clearly still a very revealing area of study. 
17