Nick Tsagaris – Usain Bolt Offered Deal By Maltese Champions League Hopefuls

Ambitious Maltese football club Valletta FC want to be taking on the likes of Manchester United and Barcelona within 12 months, and they want eight-time Olympic gold medal-winning sprinter Usain Bolt to help them.

Currently trialling with A-League club the Central Coast Mariners, Bolt has been offered a two-year deal by Valletta’s Abu Dhabi-based ownership group, Sanban Investment Group.

The new owners took control of the club in September, and have aspirations to qualify for Europe’s showpiece club competition, the UEFA Champions League by next season.

Valletta FC chief executive officer Ghasston Slimen has told the ABC he has been inspired by Bolt’s journey so far, and wants to take his journey to professional football to the next level.

“THIS IS ABOUT WRITING HISTORY,” MR SLIMEN SAID.

“Usain Bolt broke the record in Beijing in 2008 [running 9.69 seconds in the final of the 100 metres, a record he later improved on], and I have followed him for the last year-and-a-half on his football journey.

“We play the final of the Super Cup on December 13, which we will win, because we play Balzan who we beat in the league, so can you imagine Usain Bolt lifting the Super Cup trophy 10 years after he broke the record in Beijing?

“IT WILL BE HISTORY AND IT SHOULD HAPPEN.

“We will treat him as a player, we will have him training specifically without media and he’s not going to be treated as a runner, he will be treated as a footballer.

“We want to offer him a two-year contract so he will relax, and so he knows he won’t be going anywhere.

“This isn’t about money, this is about history. This is something that they will talk about in 50 or 100 years’ time,” Mr Slimen said.

Bolt scored two goals for the Mariners in his most recent appearance for the club, a 4-0 friendly win over an amateur team from south-western Sydney last Friday night.

It was just his second hit-out for the Mariners, and while Slimen admits Bolt’s footballing skills remain a work in progress, he is excited by the potential.

“They [Central Coast Mariners] are the ones who are inspiring me. I have followed his training and his games,” Mr Slimen said.

“THE FIRST HALF WAS CATASTROPHIC, HE MADE A LOT OF MISTAKES, BUT THE FINISH FOR HIS FIRST GOAL WAS REALLY GOOD.

“What pushed me was how much he wanted it. The celebrations made me realise that he is really passionate about it. What inspired me was the way he celebrated his goal.

“I don’t want him to be here on holiday, I want him training hard.

“We have seven international players in our squad, so we would have to drop one of them if he was good enough to play in matches, and a lot of them have also been scoring for their country, so it will be very hard,” Mr Slimen said.

A deal was officially tabled to Bolt’s Australian management on Saturday, and Mr Slimen wants the 32-year-old to link up with the current Maltese Premier League champions as soon as possible.

“WE WANT HIM AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, TO GET HIM IN THE SQUAD,” HE SAID.

“I don’t want to make a big fuss, I want him to sign the contract, get on the flight, arrive in Malta and train, because we need to prepare for the Super Cup.

“We will need three weeks to register him with the Maltese FA and he would probably play three to four games before the Super Cup.

“HE’S 32, I DON’T WANT HIM TO BE 33 BY THE TIME HE COMES TO MALTA.

“I think he could play for two or three years for our club, he is 32 but I don’t want him to just play football, I want him to lift trophies.”

Whilst Bolt is yet to earn a contract at the Central Coast, the ABC understands the A-League battlers do have the first right of refusal if the superstar sprinter is offered a contract elsewhere.

They remain unconvinced that is the case at this stage.

“At the moment, what is out there is very clearly agent-driven to try to pressure the club into making a decision,” a Mariners spokesperson said.

As for Ghasston Slimen and Valletta FC, the dream appears very real.

“This is not only Usain’s dream and imagination, this is the dream of others all over the world as well, including mine,” Mr Slimen said.

“If we make it to the group stage, we have to be playing big teams. Manchester United, City, Barcelona, Real Madrid.

“CAN YOU IMAGINE US PLAYING THESE BIG TEAMS IN CHAMPIONS LEAGUE WITH USAIN BOLT IN OUR SQUAD OR ON THE BENCH? THIS IS BIG.

“I am interested in making this a historic moment.

“I cannot forget that image of him lifting the Super Cup by himself, 10 years after Beijing.

“That image is what’s motivating me to do this.”

By: Abc.net.au

Nick Tsagaris - Lucy Gichuhi Threatens To Name Liberal Insiders Who She Says Bullied Colleagues During Leadership Spill

Liberal senator Lucy Gichuhi has threatened to use parliamentary privilege to name those inside the Liberal Party she says have bullied and intimidated her.

In an exclusive interview with RN Drive, Senator Gichuhi also said the political execution of former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull was a factor in her pre-selection battle.

She revealed one Liberal Party figure in South Australia asked her during her pre-selection battle as far back as June whether she wanted Mr Turnbull to lead the Liberal Party to the election.

"I was asked that question [about Malcolm Turnbull] by one of the pre-selectors. So for that question to arise, then something was already happening," she said in relation to the move against Mr Turnbull.

She said the question was asked by someone who wanted to get rid of Mr Turnbull.

Senator Gichuhi was relegated to an unwinnable spot in the South Australian Liberal pre-selection process, and has decided to speak out against bullying and intimidation.

"I will detail my experience not only with the PM's spill, because this is a culture, this is a systematic kind of issue. I will say from when I joined the Liberal Party, from when I joined politics … and how, what, where, I think, would be construed or would fit the definition of bullying," she said.

'People were subject to threats and intimidation': O'Dwyer
Cabinet Minister Kelly O'Dwyer added further weight to the claims, telling 7.30 she had spoken to both male and female MPs in the wake of the leadership spill and "it is clear to me that people were subject to threats and intimidation and bullying".


"I certainly don't think at any level we can accept intimidation or bullying in any workplace and that includes the Australian Parliament," Ms O'Dwyer said.



She said Parliament could be a "pretty robust place" when it came to policy debates, and argued that was acceptable.

"But certainly there is behaviour that is outside of the accepted bounds," she added.

Ms O'Dwyer said when people stepped outside the bounds of acceptable behaviour "we must say it is not acceptable, not to be tolerated, it is not right".

Last week, Liberal MP Julia Banks announced she would not run again for Parliament and cited bullying and intimidation over leadership.

Other Liberals dismissed that and implied politics was a rough and tumble game.

Kelly O'Dwyer said that attitude made her "a little bit disgusted".

She compared politics to AFL football, saying there's no question it can be robust, "but we do not say it is at all acceptable for someone to punch you in the head behind play".

'Senators and ministers in tears'
Senator Gichuhi said she knew bullying happened to other MPs in the Parliament during the spill because she witnessed it.

"Absolutely, I had senators and ministers in tears, that's how bad it was. One of my colleagues was in tears the whole day," she said.

But Senator Gichuhi rejected claims that it was just part of the rough and tumble of politics and said this was beyond anything acceptable.

"Absolutely not, I'm talking about senators and ministers who were in tears because they were at the crossroads where they could not choose, especially the ones from Victoria went through a very, very rough time because they were holding a carrot … like this is your pre-selection — 'hey you do this, we do that'," she said.

"One senator had to be told that on your marking the ballot paper you show another senator. What kind of workplace is that?"
Senator Gichuhi said the Liberal Party must change its processes to bring an end to the bullying culture.

"This has happened in Labor, this has happened in Liberal. So I think we need a formal, structured, protected way of dispute resolution, whatever those disputes are, and this should be in every workplace … otherwise I will be intimidated, people will be intimidated," she said.

"We must have a formal professional way of dealing with disputes whether it's in Parliament, whether somebody is a staffer, whether somebody is a parliamentarian. If you don't like the current PM, for example, there must be a formal way of addressing that. Otherwise the way it is now is just pure kangaroo court, anybody can do something.

"How do we know that tomorrow we are not going to go back into a sitting week and another side doesn't like Scott Morrison and then we start all over again?

"I just tried as much as possible to keep out of it but it just was not possible … I don't think anybody would like to be in that kind of environment, where your friends are no longer friends … colleagues who you sit next to, they are no longer looking at you with the same eyes [as we] are parliamentarians together."

Source : abc.net.au

Nick Tsagaris - ISS Is Passing Over Australia, Here's What You Need To Know To Spot It

Australians sure are a curious bunch when it comes to the International Space Station (ISS).

We're one of the top countries in the world to seek out where and when we'll next see it floating by in the night sky, according to NASA.

This weekend's a great opportunity to get out for a squiz — if you're in or around Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne or Perth, you're in for a treat.

Want to get in on the fun? It's easy. Here's what you need to know:

ELI5, what is the ISS?

ISS is jointly owned by the United States, Russia, Canada, Europe and Japan.

It's been orbiting the Earth since 1998, and has been slowly expanded over the years.

The best way to describe it is "Earth's space lab", astrophysicist Dr Brad Tucker says.

"If you want to test things in space, if you want to put things in space, you need to build an entire satellite. Or the space station really was this multi-national effort to provide that lab to do experiments," Dr Tucker said.

"Lots of groups mount telescopes or measuring devices around the space station so instead of building all these individual satellites you can put it on the space station.

"You also have an astronaut there so if something goes wrong they can work on it, send you data, or fix it. So it really is a space lab."

ISS has at least another 10 years of use left in it, and Donald Trump is interested in selling the US stake in it.

There are currently six crew members on board.

How many times a day does ISS orbit the Earth?

Quite a lot.

Every orbit is about 90 minutes, so two orbits every three hours, or 16 per day.

That's a whole lot of sunrises and sunsets for those on board.

It's not like ISS is following any set path either — the station crosses all parts of the Earth because the orbit "wobbles".

"But a lot of those times are during the day time, or it passes just on the horizon, but because it's doing it so often there's actually a number of times the space station passes overhead," Dr Tucker said.

"Usually in a given week or so you can find a time that the space station is passing over in the evening over an area near you."

How will I know when the ISS is flying overhead?

NASA has its own "Spot the Station" website set up where you can check sighting opportunities from nearly 100 locations across Australia up to 10 days in advance.

You can sign up there for text message or email notifications whenever there's going to be a decent chance of spotting the station.

Generally you should get an alert 12 hours ahead of a scheduled sighting.

There are also some apps for your phone you can set up for similar alerts.

ISS Detector is one, ISS Spotter is another.

How often can I expect to see the ISS?

Some places around the world are luckier than others when it comes to ISS sightings.

Some spots can get only one sighting a month, others can get several a week.

The planets really have to align (space pun intended) if you're going to see the ISS doing its thing in low orbit.

You need the correct:

• Time: It needs to be dark where you are. It has to be just before sunrise or just after sunset.
• Location: Just like real estate, it's all about "location, location, location". The station must be 40 degrees or more above the horizon from where you are for it to be visible.
• Weather: Clear skies are best obviously, cloudy conditions can ruin your chances of a sighting.

Tick all three boxes, and you're in with a shot!

The ISS is due to fly over my area. What am I looking for?

A very bright light moving across the sky — somewhere between an aeroplane and a shooting star.

"The space station is the brightest moving object in the sky, and it will move quickly across the sky," Dr Tucker said.

"It moves faster than an aeroplane, but the lights don't blink, but it's like a shooting star where it's just this bright light that moves.

"It can last from 20 seconds up to a few minutes depending on where it's orbiting."

No need for a telescope either — you can spot the ISS with the naked eye.

Basically it'll look a little something like it does in this video:

I've just got an alert about an upcoming sighting of the ISS. How do I decipher the information?

If you sign up to one of those apps mentioned above, you may get a notification like this:

SpotTheStation! Time: Wed Apr 25 7:45 PM, Visible: 4 min, Max Height: 66 degrees, Appears: WSW, Disappears NE.

To break it down for you:

Time: When the sighting opportunity will begin in your local time zone. All sightings will occur within a few hours before or after sunrise or sunset. This is the optimum viewing period as the sun reflects off the space station and contrasts against the darker sky.

Visible: The maximum time period the space station is visible before crossing back below the horizon.

Max Height: It represents the height of the space station from the horizon in the night sky. The horizon is at zero degrees, and directly overhead is ninety degrees. If you hold your fist at arm's length and place your fist resting on the horizon, the top will be about 10 degrees. It's measured in degrees (also known as elevation).

Appears: The location in the sky where the station will be visible first. This value, like maximum height, also is measured in degrees from the horizon. The letters represent compass directions.

Disappears: Represents where in the night sky the ISS will leave your field of view.

So for the instance above, the ISS will be visible at 7:45pm for four minutes. It will appear 66 degrees above the horizon from west south-west of your position, and disappear in the north-east.

Is there anything else I can spot orbiting the Earth?

Yes, other satellites!

"I would say on any given clear night if you're looking at the sky you'll see one satellite every 30 minutes to hour," Dr Tucker said.

One thing to keep an eye out for are iridium communication satellites and their iridium flares.

"The panels are really reflective, so there won't be a bright streak like the ISS but there will be a bright flash," Dr Tucker said.

"So sometimes if you see a bright flash it's actually what we call an iridium flare, and if the angles are right you get a bright reflection off these communication satellites."

Here's what it looks like:

By: abc.net.au

Nick Tsagaris - ISS Is Passing Over Australia, Here's What You Need To Know To Spot It

Australians sure are a curious bunch when it comes to the International Space Station (ISS).

We're one of the top countries in the world to seek out where and when we'll next see it floating by in the night sky, according to NASA.

This weekend's a great opportunity to get out for a squiz — if you're in or around Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne or Perth, you're in for a treat.

Want to get in on the fun? It's easy. Here's what you need to know:

ELI5, what is the ISS?

ISS is jointly owned by the United States, Russia, Canada, Europe and Japan.

It's been orbiting the Earth since 1998, and has been slowly expanded over the years.

The best way to describe it is "Earth's space lab", astrophysicist Dr Brad Tucker says.

"If you want to test things in space, if you want to put things in space, you need to build an entire satellite. Or the space station really was this multi-national effort to provide that lab to do experiments," Dr Tucker said.

"Lots of groups mount telescopes or measuring devices around the space station so instead of building all these individual satellites you can put it on the space station.

"You also have an astronaut there so if something goes wrong they can work on it, send you data, or fix it. So it really is a space lab."

ISS has at least another 10 years of use left in it, and Donald Trump is interested in selling the US stake in it.

There are currently six crew members on board.

How many times a day does ISS orbit the Earth?

Quite a lot.

Every orbit is about 90 minutes, so two orbits every three hours, or 16 per day.

That's a whole lot of sunrises and sunsets for those on board.

It's not like ISS is following any set path either — the station crosses all parts of the Earth because the orbit "wobbles".

"But a lot of those times are during the day time, or it passes just on the horizon, but because it's doing it so often there's actually a number of times the space station passes overhead," Dr Tucker said.

"Usually in a given week or so you can find a time that the space station is passing over in the evening over an area near you."

How will I know when the ISS is flying overhead?

NASA has its own "Spot the Station" website set up where you can check sighting opportunities from nearly 100 locations across Australia up to 10 days in advance.

You can sign up there for text message or email notifications whenever there's going to be a decent chance of spotting the station.

Generally you should get an alert 12 hours ahead of a scheduled sighting.

There are also some apps for your phone you can set up for similar alerts.

ISS Detector is one, ISS Spotter is another.

How often can I expect to see the ISS?

Some places around the world are luckier than others when it comes to ISS sightings.

Some spots can get only one sighting a month, others can get several a week.

The planets really have to align (space pun intended) if you're going to see the ISS doing its thing in low orbit.

You need the correct:

• Time: It needs to be dark where you are. It has to be just before sunrise or just after sunset.
• Location: Just like real estate, it's all about "location, location, location". The station must be 40 degrees or more above the horizon from where you are for it to be visible.
• Weather: Clear skies are best obviously, cloudy conditions can ruin your chances of a sighting.

Tick all three boxes, and you're in with a shot!

The ISS is due to fly over my area. What am I looking for?

A very bright light moving across the sky — somewhere between an aeroplane and a shooting star.

"The space station is the brightest moving object in the sky, and it will move quickly across the sky," Dr Tucker said.

"It moves faster than an aeroplane, but the lights don't blink, but it's like a shooting star where it's just this bright light that moves.

"It can last from 20 seconds up to a few minutes depending on where it's orbiting."

No need for a telescope either — you can spot the ISS with the naked eye.

Basically it'll look a little something like it does in this video:

I've just got an alert about an upcoming sighting of the ISS. How do I decipher the information?

If you sign up to one of those apps mentioned above, you may get a notification like this:

SpotTheStation! Time: Wed Apr 25 7:45 PM, Visible: 4 min, Max Height: 66 degrees, Appears: WSW, Disappears NE.

To break it down for you:

Time: When the sighting opportunity will begin in your local time zone. All sightings will occur within a few hours before or after sunrise or sunset. This is the optimum viewing period as the sun reflects off the space station and contrasts against the darker sky.

Visible: The maximum time period the space station is visible before crossing back below the horizon.

Max Height: It represents the height of the space station from the horizon in the night sky. The horizon is at zero degrees, and directly overhead is ninety degrees. If you hold your fist at arm's length and place your fist resting on the horizon, the top will be about 10 degrees. It's measured in degrees (also known as elevation).

Appears: The location in the sky where the station will be visible first. This value, like maximum height, also is measured in degrees from the horizon. The letters represent compass directions.

Disappears: Represents where in the night sky the ISS will leave your field of view.

So for the instance above, the ISS will be visible at 7:45pm for four minutes. It will appear 66 degrees above the horizon from west south-west of your position, and disappear in the north-east.

Is there anything else I can spot orbiting the Earth?

Yes, other satellites!

"I would say on any given clear night if you're looking at the sky you'll see one satellite every 30 minutes to hour," Dr Tucker said.

One thing to keep an eye out for are iridium communication satellites and their iridium flares.

"The panels are really reflective, so there won't be a bright streak like the ISS but there will be a bright flash," Dr Tucker said.

"So sometimes if you see a bright flash it's actually what we call an iridium flare, and if the angles are right you get a bright reflection off these communication satellites."

Here's what it looks like:

By: abc.net.au

Nick Tsagaris - Meet Three Trans And Non-Binary Artists Who Are Reimagining The Way We Tell Stories

If you look at lives as if they are stories, there's one plot line that seems to dominate: birth, puberty, work, marriage, child-rearing — and finally, death.

But if you're queer or gender non-conforming, many of these plot points can be inaccessible, irrelevant or otherwise fraught.

In this context, some artists are creating works that trouble the line and the form, and in turn making their own plot points.

For Bailee-Rose Farnham, a classically trained dancer and trans woman, choreography has been a way to reconnect with the artform she loves.

"I feel like society tells you that you have to live a certain way, dress a certain way, act a certain way. I was in an environment [at a major dance company] where that was all people really did, and it was soul-crushing," says Farnham.

For non-binary theatre-maker Bobuq Sayed, "linearity [in narrative] has never been really something that appealed. I think there's a lot of really boring theatre out there. [You have to ask]: What is the theatre offering us that no other space can even hope to replicate?"

Trans and non-binary writer and poet Quinn Eades' hybrid works also resist linearity. Eades explains that while the prefix "trans" means "going across", his writings "trouble the idea that trans narratives are very simple and follow a fairly linear model of moving across from one [gender] to the other".

'Femininity is different for every single person'

There was a time when Farnham felt completely alienated from one of the things she most loved.

"It was quite confronting when I first transitioned," she says.

"I grew up in ballet being told I had to be really strong, and all of a sudden I was told I had to be more soft, that I had to have this essence of femininity — that I feel like I wasn't able to achieve because of the way I looked and the body type that I have."

She spent two years in a major dance company, and developed an eating disorder while attempting to meet their ideal of femininity.

As a woman of colour, Farnham also "felt very exoticised", she says. "I felt like my technique and my performance was only valid if I was being sexy or sprawled out across the floor; if I was exuding this hyper-sexual female."

Through choreographing her own work, which dismantles traditional ideas of femininity, Farnham has learnt to embrace her artform and her body.

"I try to swap the gender roles of the dancers around, in my pas de deux or pas de trois [ballets of two or three dancers] — where the male usually would be lifting the female, I would have the women doing the lift … or the man doing pirouettes."

The choreographer has also cast her ballets with two women or two men, rather than the usual opposite-sex couple.

"This changes the tone and changes the storyline, because I'm trying to have as much queerness [as possible] in my art," Farnham says.

She describes the results as "liberating".

"If I want to exude a hyper-sexualised feminine energy, I can do it in my own way. I don't have to conform to [another choreographer's] idea of what femininity is, because femininity is different for every single woman, every single person."

"I'm not afraid to look a certain way anymore."

Recently, Farnham choreographed a work for ABC Arts iview series Art Bites: Unboxed. "It was about my experiences in different relationships, with beauty standards, and as a gay person," says Farnham. Her next piece will explore her transition.

"I hope to draw out these experiences in the hope that it will help others."

What could trans dramaturgy be?

Bobuq Sayed is a non-binary writer, performer and multidisciplinary artist, and a member of the Afghan diaspora. Sayed doesn't identify as a man or a woman, and uses the pronoun "they".

Sayed is also a member of trans and non-binary theatre group Embittered Swish.

"We are dedicated to progressing trans representation, beyond a very introductory 'Trans 101' perspective," Sayed explains. "That perspective often panders to cisgendered audiences [people whose gender identity is in line with their sex assigned at birth], which is not who we are making art for."

An Embittered Swish performance doesn't unfold like a conventional piece of theatre. There is no easily discernible sense of a beginning, middle, or end. There are, however, narrative moments, punctuated by music and movement in unexpected ways.

"Trying to specifically name what trans dramaturgy is, is difficult," says Sayed, "but it is the outcome of what happens when trans artists and theatre-makers come together to make art about their experiences."

"I think often, as trans artists, the kind of art we make is confined to art about our transition and about our gender dysphoria, which is prescribed from outside our community," Sayed says.

"With [Embittered Swish], we're trying to make art that hopes to dismantle or interrupt how trans representation is typically done."

In Estrogenesis, which premiered at Melbourne's Next Wave Festival in May, the group took aim at ideas of transition, resolution and power, by examining the medicalisation of the trans experience.

This work is part of a larger vision to "contest narratives of representation, specifically this idea of transition or resolution … [or] of linearity, of moving from A to B [from one gender to another]".

"The reality of transitioning is that it doesn't look the same for anyone and there is no right or wrong way to do it," says Sayed. "It does take a lot of work and it has a psychological, emotional and financial cost on bodies, communities and subjectivities."

Hybrid, fragmentary writing

Quinn Eades is a writer, poet and researcher. "My gender identity is that I'm a trans-masc [masculine] person, my pronouns are 'he, him and his'. But it's a very layered pronoun for me; it also holds the 'she' that I was," Eades says.

"I'm pretty non-binary and so 'they/them' is in there as well," he adds.

Eades works in a kind of hybrid writing style. For example, All the Beginnings: A Queer Autobiography of the Body was "a mixture of philosophy, critical theory, poetry and autobiography".

"I pull out quotes from whatever I'm reading and then I use them to jump in and out of the writing. I think of myself as having conversations with other writers, theorists and sources, rather than doing analytical work," he says.

"There are definitely echoes and resonances for me, between living a transqueer life and also exploring those marginalities in writing, through refusing to stick to a recognisable genre and really playing with form, as well as content."

Eades is currently working on a new book, titled Transpositions. "It's a memoir from the body in transition," he says.

He says that he's working in "fragments" of memoir, alongside a column of fairy story.

"I think what we see in popular culture is a really stable narrative around trans bodies," he says.

That stable narrative sees people transitioning from one gender to another, through "a series of hormone treatments, medical procedures and social transitional processes — for example, changing your name".

"By using fragments and fairy story, I'm saying that for me and I think for most trans people, it's a lot more complex than that. There is no one trans narrative that we can follow."

By: abc.net.au

Nick Tsagaris - How Men Are Embracing 'Clean Eating' Posts On Instagram

Instagram is the world's fastest growing social network site, with over 700 million accounts comprised of mostly young (18 to 29-year-old), female users.

                      

Part of the app's appeal is that it gives users a chance to experiment with self-presentation techniques and identify with different communities and movements online.

One such movement is "clean eating" — embracing a diet comprised of foods perceived to be "clean" and "pure", such as unprocessed, unrefined, and nutrient-rich ones, typically eaten as small meals throughout the day. A relatively recent phenomenon used to promote blogs, cook books and exercise programs, the movement advocates a plant-based diet mostly free of red meat, gluten, sugar and alcohol.

"Clean eating" has an underlying moral dimension elevating certain foods over those deemed to be dirty and impure. By default, those who do not subscribe to a "clean" diet and lifestyle are perceived to be of lower status.

Instagram's demographics — and the weight loss industry's focus on women — might lead one to expect women would dominate "clean eating" posts, but our new study has found that men feature more prominently in them.

We examined images categorised under the hashtags #cleaneating and #eatclean, looking at 144 top posts over eight days. We examined the nine highest ranking daily posts for each hashtag according to the quantity of engagement (such as "likes", comments) and the quality of it. The most surprising finding was the prevalence of men, with 68 per cent of posts featuring male subjects.

Clean eating posts on Instagram make a strong connection between lifestyle, gender and identity. Most of those depicted appear to be late teens or young adults. Images that achieved top post status overwhelmingly focused on individual bodies, rather than food.

These posts subscribed to specific ideals of masculinity. Most portrayed men engaging in muscle presentation, with exaggerated displays of flexed arms and abdominal muscles to convey virile strength and power. The muscular features of those depicted were accentuated through the use of framing, camera focus, filters and bodily positioning.

Posts of this kind represent a form of hegemonic masculinity, where fortitude, athleticism and competitiveness are valued over other masculine forms. Despite the cultural connection between meat and masculinity, when framed in relation to individual health and the environment, clean eating and meatless meals were presented as rational choices.

Insta clean eating posts feed 'healthism'

The prevalence of masculine display in "clean eating" top posts also feeds into ideals of healthism — a way of locating the problem of health and disease at the level of the individual rather than as a state or societal responsibility.

The frequency with which men featured in clean eating top posts reveals not only the importance of diet and body image for men today, but the ways in which the diet industry and advertising increasingly targets men.

Instagram has become a profitable enterprise, with bloggers using their image to influence others to purchase products and services. While there is an absence of overt advertising on Instagram, over half of the images we analysed doubled as native advertising for weight loss programs, supplements and food products. This was particularly the case with those images that focused on the body (for example, muscle presentation shots), with attractive bodies doubling as advertisements by feeding aspirational desires.

For instance, one muscle presentation post was accompanied by the caption: "Make progress not excuses. Make a change today and let me take your physique to the next level" — the image of a muscular man at the gym operating as an ad for a personal trainer.

Despite the common assumption that social media allows for more fluid expressions of identity, our research indicates the degree to which commercial interests infiltrate the platform.

Stephanie Alice Baker is a lecturer in sociology at the University of London; Michael Walsh is assistant professor of social science at the University of Canberra.

This article originally appeared on The Conversation.

By: abc.net.au