Gender Stereotypes and Body Image

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how the media's influence in Western culture is pervasive and how, through magazines, television, and print ads such as billboards, advertisers have consistently adopted gender stereotypes in terms of body image and use these stereotypes to sell their products. It looks at how the stereotypical womanly ideal is slender to the point of looking unhealthy and how men are consistently presented with an overly muscular, perfectly lean physique. It considers the effects of such unrealistic stereotypical ideals and looks at the effects of the female stereotype on men and of the male stereotype on women.

From the Paper:

"The presentation of the ideal female stereotype also has effects in terms of eating disorders that are seen in parts of the world where this ideal predominates. Since the ideal presented is so far from normal, and can rarely be attained by healthy means, anorexia nervosa and bulimia rates have risen. The only way most women can approach this stereotype of is through starvation or disordered eating. Research (Botta et al., 2003) has shown that rates of eating disorders may be predicted based upon the magazine reading habits of the women studied. If subjects were repeatedly exposed to images of unrealistically thin models, prevalence of anorexia and bulimia was greater. "Overall, magazine reading and processing accounted for 28.0% of variance for girls' anorexic behaviors 27.5% for girls' bulimic behaviors 23.4% for girls' body satisfaction [and] 41.6% for girls' drive to be thin." (Botta, 2003). Ironically, men do not see thinness as the same prerequisite for attractiveness in women that women themselves do."

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