How Media Affects A Woman’s Esteem?

Pulse

oi-Staff

By Super Admin

Tuesday, May 31, 2011, 14:07

It seems media plays a major role in influencing a woman"s self esteem. When it deflates the weight of overweight women, it inflates the self esteem of skinny females. The self-esteem of overweight women goes down when they view photographs of models of any size, while underweight women"s esteem increases.

Individuals with different body mass indexes (BMIs) feel differently when they were exposed to thin or heavy media models. Self-esteem can shift upwards or downwards depending on the model they are exposed to! Normal BMI females (with BMIs between 18.5 and 25) have higher levels of self-esteem when exposed to moderately thin models (because they feel similar to these models) and extremely heavy models (because they feel dissimilar to these models).

However, they have lower levels of self-esteem when exposed to moderately heavy models (because they feel similar) and extremely thin models (because they feel dissimilar). This shows how media exposure affects the self-esteem of overweight and underweight women. Underweight women's self-esteem always increases, regardless of the model they look at!

On the other hand, overweight women"s self-esteem always decreases, regardless of the model they look at! Perhaps surprisingly, overweight and underweight women showed comparable levels of self-esteem when they weren"t looking at models. Advertisements also affected participants' eating behaviour and intentions to diet and exercise.

For example, overweight participants ate fewer cookies and had higher intentions to diet and exercise when exposed to heavy models than when exposed to thin models. It is better that overweight consumers attempt to avoid looking at ads with any models, thin or heavy (perhaps by avoiding women"s magazines).

The new study was published in Journal of Consumer Research by authors Dirk Smeesters (Erasmus University, the Netherlands), Thomas Mussweiler (University of Cologne, Germany), and Naomi Mandel (Arizona State University).