Thin Ideal Body Image

Body Image and the Thin Ideal Numerous studies have been conducted in an attempt to explain the connection between television and body image. The ideal body for women has long been thin, sometimes unattainably so, and is often associated with having a life filled with success and happiness. To fully comprehend this subject the difference between the real world physical body must be defined separately from one’s perception of their body, often categorized as the self-schema which as Myers and Biocca (1992) put it is a person’s construction of those traits that make the person distinctive and constitute the sense of “me.” Individuals build this sense of self from observation of their own behaviors, the reaction of others to the self, and more

Fundamentally, the perception of their body alters in response to stimulus regardless of the lack of physical changes in their actual form. In one of their hypotheses, they sought to show that when young women are subjected to television programs and commercials laden with thin ideal images and situations that it temporarily increases the viewer 's body dissatisfaction and depression. Their results were paradoxical; they concluded that the viewers saw the images of these women as an attainable ideal and essentially a goal that they could work towards, giving them hope and a slight euphoria. In addition to this, Swami and Smith (2012) reference another study from 2009 in which viewers became more depressed when watching advertisements featuring women presented as being more realistic than most models used in television. Those who performed the study suggest results are due to “ the extent that images of average sized models focus viewers’ attention on their own bodies” which “may trigger a fear of fatness among female viewers.”