Media Body Image

Words: 1653
Pages: 7

In comparison to the time span of history, the media is a relatively new presence in the world. Despite its rather contemporary status, the media is a wide-spread entity in modern society. From television to the internet, and from social media to online news sources, nearly every family in modern society has access to the media in some way. Media has affected society in many ways, including the way people view themselves. It becomes particularly important to study the relationship that has formed between media and body image, especially when it comes to how it is changing the way people feel about themselves. Studying the data that has been collected over the connection between body image and the media gives insight to the nature of the relationship. …show more content…
When introduced to the experimental materials about the rejection of media ideals about women, women who placed media ideals as important in their personal lives were found to have less adverse effects as a result of the images shown. Those who did not find media ideals to be important did not display a significant impact on their body image when given the experimental materials before the presentation that had pictures of models (Yamamiya, Cash, Melnyk, Posavac & Posavac, …show more content…
The factors that were examined included whether the level of how much the participant evaluated themselves based on appearance was high or low, whether the advertisement being used included products that were related to the body, and whether the advertisement shown included the idealized image of a woman. The surveys and data were collected in a session prior to the experiment, which was conducted in a second session. During the final session of the experiment, participants were shown 24 magazine advertisements. The images were chosen to fit into four different categories that each had six images present in them. The first section of images included pictures that had the ideal image of a woman and products that were related to the body. The second section of images included pictures that had the ideal image of a women absent and products that were related to the body. The third section of photos included photos that had no images of the ideal woman and no products related to the body. The final section included photos that had images of the ideal woman and products that were not related to the body. Participants were given 20 seconds to look at each advertisement, and told to absorb as much information as possible during that time. At the end of each section of photos, the participants were asked to complete the surveys that assessed body shame and anxiety about appearance. At the end of the study, the