Body shape refers to the many physical attributes of the human body that make up its appearance, including size and countenance. Body shape has come to imply not only sexual/reproductive ability, but wellness and fitness. In the West, slenderness is associated with happiness, success, youth, and social acceptability. Being overweight is associated with laziness. The media promote a weight-conscious standard for women more often than for men. Deviance from these norms results in social consequences. The media perpetuate this ideal in various ways, particularly glorifying and focusing on thin actors and actresses, models, and other public figures while avoiding the use or image of overweight individuals. This thin ideal represents less than 15% of the American population.
Magazines It has been stated that the increase in eating disorders over the past several decades has coincided with an overall decrease (pound-wise) in women's ideal body weight portrayed by the mass media. A group of researchers examined the magazines Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Mademoiselle, and Vogue from 1959 to 1999. Fashion models became increasingly thinner during the 1980s and 1990s, making the thin ideal even more difficult for women to achieve. Photos depicting the models' entire bodies significantly increased in number from the 1960s to the 1990s. From 1995 to 1999 models were dressed in far more revealing outfits than they were from 1959 to 1963. Women's magazines have been criticized for their conflicting messages, with an emphasis on food, cooking, child rearing, and entertaining. Seventy-five percent of women's magazines contain at least one ad or article about how to alter one's appearance through cosmetic surgery, diet, or exercise. Twenty-five percent of the women's magazines surveyed included tips for dieting or messages about weight loss. Many women's magazines focus on how to lead a better life by improving physical appearance. Megenta magazine released an article on "How to dress for your body type" giving tips and tricks to look the best in an outfit while striving to encourage women to feel comfortable in their skin. Men's magazines provide information about hobbies, activities, and entertainment for men to better their lives. Much of the research about how the media affects body image examines the change in models and magazine articles over time. Garner, Garfinkel, Schwartz, and Thompson paid particular attention to the difference in body shape of Playboy centerfolds over a 20-year period. They found that over the years, the body mass, bust, and hip measurements decreased; however, the height increased. They also determined that the Playboy centerfolds were 13%–19% lower than the normal body weight for women of their age (Cusumano, Thompson 1997). Other studies found that over the years, magazines like Seventeen, YM, and Cosmopolitan all had an increase in articles about diet and exercise. Anderson and DiDomenico (1992) compared women's and men's popular magazines and found that diet and exercise articles appeared more than 10 times as much in women's magazines than men's.
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