Eating Disorders and the Media

Eating Disorders and the Media

Question:

How does the media alter the perceptions of adolescents' body image? & How does this exposure to the "ideal body" lead adolescents to develop eating disorders?

Hypothesis:

Media exposure creates an ideal body image that is not easily maintained by most adolescents and causes adolescents to be dissatisfied with their bodies and leads to unhealthy diet habits and other more sever eating disorders.

Logic of Study:

What if the media was limited to adolescents, would they be less likely develop an eating disorder or would they just in fact have there own thoughts creating the "actual self". Adolescents tend to have their own perceptions of what they want their bodies to look like and with the media's influence the develop eating disorders. The media's functions include entertainment, sensation, and in many ways a good source to learn cultural and societal lifestyles that are lived by other boys and girls of their ages.

Today we see many adolescent boys and girls consumed in what they should look like. Media exposure such as, television, movies, magazines, advertisements, and beauty pageants use models that are very thin, in shape and are to what the media portrays the ideal bodies of an adolescent. The purpose of this study is to measure the media's influence on eating disorders. I will focus a great deal on adolescent's eating disorders in regards to the "actual self"(what is practical) and the "ideal self" (what should be) of the perfect body.

Method:

Using a questionnaire I will screen forty boys and girls from sixteen to about the age of twenty-one as potential participants for my study. I will ask questions about their bodies and who or what has given them reason...

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their parents. Compulsive eating and dieting behaviors were assessed with

self-report scales developed and tested by the authors in prior studies

(e.g., 1983). Among boys, dieting and compulsive eating both were directly

related to feelings that they had failed to meet the perceived expectations

of their parents. In contrast, the amount of compulsive eating reported by

girls depended on the perceived power structure of the family. Girls from

families perceived to be mother-dominated reported more compulsive eating, a

feeling of failure to meet mothers' standards, and a higher need for social

approval than di!

d girls from families in which mother and father were perceived to rule

equally, or families in which the children were perceived to share equally

with parents in making major decisions. ((c) 1999 APA/PsycINFO, all rights

reserved)