On a daily basis, we are surrounded by unrealistic images of women: celebrities on the covers of gossip magazines, animated cartoons depicting attractive female characters, and models advertising beauty supplies, to name a few. How do all of these images affect how women view their own bodies?
A systematic review published in the Psychological Bulletin looked at 77 studies that explore the links between media exposure and women’s body dissatisfaction, internalization of the thin ideal, and eating behaviors.
On the whole, the reviewers found that exposure to media of all sorts is connected to women feeling dissatisfied with their bodies and spending more on beauty products to enhance their appearance. The evidence also showed that women exposed to more media images are more likely to engage in behaviors linked to eating disorders, such as bulimia and anorexia.
The reviewers called these connections “robust” because they appear across different types of studies, and don’t appear to change with individual differences such as media type, age or income level.
So what should we do about it in terms of how we live our daily lives? To answer that question, we turned to Janis Whitlock, a research scientist in the Bronfenbrenner Center for Transnational Research and Director of the Cornell Research Program on Self-Injury and Recovery.
“Helping all people become more media literate is important, but limiting exposure to airbrushed and unrealistic images of women and men is also important,” she said. “Although this can be challenging in the contemporary age, using this evidence to filter decisions about what magazines you have in the house, what TV shows your family or children watch, or what you innocently describe as ‘pretty’ or ‘beautiful’ is also important.
“It is also helpful to use images encountered to ask questions about what makes someone attractive or appealing,” she said. “There has never been a more important time for these kinds of conversations.”
The take-home message? The images that we encounter on a daily basis shape our feelings about our bodies and affect our eating behaviors. It’s important to be aware of this, and to limit our exposure to unrealistic images.
Speak Your Mind