The Media, Body Evaluation, and Perceptions of Physical Attractiveness Among College-Aged Women and Men

Abstract

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The Effect of Experimental Presentation of Images of Women in Magazine Advertising and Works of Art on Body (Dis)satisfaction in Adolescent Girls

“…In the case of the perception of press advertisement representations of women, based on such attributes as youth, slimness and beauty (Grogan, 2008;Silberstein et al, 1986), teenage girls experienced a significant lowering of positive body emotion. It can be assumed that in accordance with the objectified body consciousness theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997), the unrealistic images of women, most often digitally retouched, and therefore impossible to achieve in reality (Kilbourne, 2002;Tyler et al, 2009), triggered in them the processes of social comparison (Festinger, 1954), and in consequence strong feelings of shame and fear. The higher the initial level of self-objectification (in the dimensions of body surveillance and body shame) that characterised the respondent before the study (see Table 3), the stronger those feelings were.…”