Body Image and Weight

The desire to lose weight is highly correlated with poor body image, with more women than men wanting to lose weight. Kashubeck-West et al. reported that when considering only men and women who desire to lose weight, sex differences in body image disappear. In her article "The Beauty Myth," Naomi Wolf (2009) reported that "thirty-three thousand women told American researchers they would rather lose ten to fifteen pounds than achieve any other goal." Through repeated images of excessively thin women in media, advertisement, and modeling, thinness has become associated with not only beauty, but happiness and success. As Charisse Goodman put it in her article, "One Picture is Worth a Thousand Diets," advertisements have changed society's ideas of beauty and ugliness: "Indeed to judge by the phrasing of the ads, 'slender' and ‘attractive' are one word, not two in the same fashion as 'fat' and 'ugly.'" This idea of beauty has become drastically more narrow and unachievable, putting increased pressure on people looking to satisfy society's standards.

Research by Martin and Xavier (2010) shows that people feel more pressure from society to be thin after viewing ads featuring a slim model. Ads featuring a larger sized model resulted in less pressure to be thin. People also felt their actual body size was larger after viewing a slim model as compared to a larger mode. Many, like journalist Marisa Meltzer, have argued this contemporary standard of beauty to be described as anorexic thinness, an unhealthy idea that is not representative of a natural human body: "Never before has the ‘perfect’ body been at such odds with our true size."

These figures do not, however, distinguish between people at a low or healthy weight and those who are in fact overweight: between those whose self-perception as overweight is incorrect and those whose perception of overweight is correct. Post-1997 studiesindicate that around 64% of American adults are overweight, such that if the 56%/40% female/male dissatisfaction rates in the Psychology Today study have held steady since its release, those dissatisfaction rates are if anything disproportionately low: although some individuals continue to believe themselves to be overweight when they are not, those persons are now outnumbered by persons who might be expected to be dissatisfied with their body but are not.

In turn, although social pressure to lose weight has adverse effects on some individuals who do not need to lose weight, those adverse effects are outweighed by that social pressure's positive effect on the overall population, without which the recent increases in obesity and associated health and social problems (described in both popular and academic parlance as an "obesity epidemic") would be even more severe than they already are.

Miss Representation is a documentary exploring and displaying the role that mainstream media plays in society today with regards to women. Prominent women in today's society were featured in discussing how the media has impacted their life along with their views on how the media is impacting the lives of people from an early age. These media messages have a severe impact on how individuals carry themselves along with what aspects bog them down like insecurities with body image. This film encourages viewers to start to see beyond the message and not compare themselves to these picture perfect computer-generated images.

The 2007 documentary America the Beautiful explores how the fashion and beauty industries are contributing to the problems that individuals feel regarding body image due to their beauty obsession. The film discusses a wide range of topics like plastic surgery, dieting, eating disorders, the modeling industry along with the fashion industry and much more. Young middle-school aged girls were portrayed in the beginning of the film and asked if they found themselves beautiful. The girls who are around the ages of 13 had decided that they were not beautiful. In today's society, people are starting to see themselves as ugly at an earlier age than ever before. As individuals who identify as ugly increase, the number of body image issues also increase.

In a study done at Old Dominion University, Thomas F. Cash, Julie R. Ancis and Melissa D. Strachan studied college women and their attitudes toward gender, feminist identity and body image. "Relative to men, women are considerably more psychologically invested in their appearance. Moreover, women's poor evaluations of and stronger investments in their looks potentiate greater body-image dysphoria in women's daily lives." A contributing factor in this scenario that leads women to greater objectify of their bodies are the images that are seen throughout media. Women who are portrayed throughout media posses unattainable beauty. "Furthermore, the social construct of femininity is partially tied to perceived beauty, as evinced by the 'what is beautiful sex-typed' stereotype." These internalized ideals along with the pursuit for this unattainable beauty of one's body image can lead to body dysmorphic disorder, body objectification, eating disorders, anxiety, depression and other related psychological difficulties.

In the same study from Arizona State University, it was said that the idea of beauty is generated from these media messages. "Cultural messages about beauty (i.e what it is, how it should be cultivated, and how it will be rewarded) are often implicitly conveyed through media representations of women." The 2007 documentary America the Beautiful explores the role of the fashion and beauty in contributing to the problems that individuals feel regarding body image due to their beauty obsession. The film discusses a wide range of topics like plastic surgery, dieting, eating disorders modeling industry and much more.

In the study from Old Dominion University, the authors state the importance of research in this area. "Given the centrality of body image in clinical and subclincial eating disturbances that are so prevalent among women, research on gender and body image has substantial importance." Even though there is research being done, there is still much more work to be done to help individuals who struggle with their body image.