Body Image and the Media: Overview

Introduction

While many factors can influence an individual’s perception of their own appearance, the American media has played an increasingly powerful role since the mid-twentieth century in creating idealized images of beauty. Beginning with the advent of television in the 1950s and escalating with the explosive growth of the internet since the 1980s, the American public has been bombarded with media-driven depictions of what constitutes desirable physical characteristics for male and female genders in our society. Generally, for women the body image is extremely thin, as depicted by fashion models. For men, the physique is tall, slender, but muscular and toned. For all genders, the most valued and appreciated appearance is youthful. Media depictions of genders outside of the male-female gender binary have increased in the twenty-first century, but they are still underrepresented in the media.

Since the late 1990s, however, a growing number of parents, medical authorities, and cultural critics have expressed concerns about the relentless marketing of idealized body images and the toll such marketing takes on the physical and mental health of Americans. According to these critics, the combination of two trends, the technology-enabled media saturation of the American public and the promotion by social media of highly unattainable body types, is largely responsible for an epidemic of body image pathologies afflicting American girls and women, as well as an increasing number of boys and men.

As individuals read fashion magazines, watch television, or scroll social media platforms like TikTok, they encounter more male and female bodies than they would otherwise. These bodies look perfect because of airbrushing techniques, plastic surgery, and special filters. In our media-driven culture, our views of what women and men should look like are shaped by these unreal images. Moreover, older men and women and people with disabilities are rarely if ever depicted in these types of media.

But people of all ages are influenced a great deal by these perfect images and spend millions of dollars each year on products that are supposed to help them attain these often-unattainable bodies. Many others develop eating disorders or become ill trying to build their bodies up beyond reasonable limits.

Understanding the Discussion

Anorexia nervosa: A body image disorder characterized by distorted perceptions of oneself as overweight and a pathological aversion to gaining weight. Distorted body images can produce intense shame, anxiety, and depression, which in turn generally drive sufferers to self-destructive behaviors including self-starvation and obsessive exercise routines.

Augmented reality filter: Application that allows social media users to add to or change the appearance of a digital image.

Body dysmorphia disorder: A disorder in which an individual’s perception of his or her own body is radically disconnected from the objective reality of that individual’s appearance.

Body image: The mental image an individual holds of his or her own physical appearance, which he or she believes also represents the way others perceive him or her.

Bulimia nervosa: A body image disorder characterized by affected individuals’ perceptions of themselves as overweight. Sufferers often feel shame and depression and undergo cycles of binging (quickly consuming large quantities of food) and purging (emptying the stomach through self-induced vomiting or the ingestion of laxatives).

Media: Print and electronic vehicles for the mass dissemination of information or entertainment. Media include the magazine, newspaper, and book publishing trades as well as the film, radio, television, and recording industries.

Muscle dysmorphia: A body image disorder characterized by affected individuals’ perceptions of themselves as lacking adequate muscularity. This body image can produce intense shame, anxiety, and depression, which in turn can drive sufferers to compulsive, often self-destructive eating, exercise, and steroid-abusing regimens. Because its symptoms mirror those of anorexia nervosa, muscle dysmorphia has sometimes been dubbed “reverse anorexia” or “bigorexia.”

History

The role of the media in driving the public’s perception of ideal body image has been influential since the early twentieth century, although the ideals themselves have evolved over time. The silent film era gave rise during the 1920s to a boyishly slender, narrow-hipped, and flat-chested ideal feminine body. Over the next four decades, however, movies, magazines, and print ads depicted increasingly more curvaceous female bodies, changing the notions of feminine beauty.

Idealized portrayals of female beauty, including World War II pin-up idols such Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth, to 1950s icons such as Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield, to 1960s stars such as Ann-Margret and Raquel Welch, emphasized voluptuously proportioned hips and breasts. However, the 1960s also marked the beginning of a significant new body image trend first popularized by the thin English supermodel Twiggy.

When Twiggy, at roughly 5 feet 8 inches tall, first created a sensation on the international fashion scene in 1966, she weighed 90 pounds (in contrast, the most iconic of 1950s beauties, Marilyn Monroe, who stood just under 5 feet 6 inches tall, is said to have weighed approximately 120 to 130 pounds). Twiggy’s trademark slenderness set a body image standard (known as the waif) for women that is still evident today in the fashion industry.

The problem, according to critics of this trend, is that the “glamorization of gaunt” has led many girls and women to internalize unhealthy and unrealistic expectations of what their own bodies should look like. The unique power of the media to shape such perceptions has been illustrated by Harvard Medical School researchers who studied the impact on body image and dietary habits following the introduction of television to the Pacific island of Fiji. Once Fijian girls were introduced to the standards of beauty presented in such popular 1990s series as Melrose Place and Beverly Hills 90210, the prevalence of eating disorders increased. There had been nearly no instances of eating disorders in Fiji prior to the introduction of television to the island.

Although much of the research on the impact of the media on body image has historically concentrated on women, that changed in the 1990s. American men and boys have also been inundated with media images of largely unrealistic muscular male physiques. The trend began in the 1980s, with the debut of intensive marketing campaigns revolving around young, shirtless, chiseled models such as those featured in the famous series of Calvin Klein underwear ads.

The obsession with bulked-up male bodies soon carried over into television commercials and print ads for some of the toy industry’s most popular products. In their book The Adonis Complex (2000), Harvard researcher Harrison G. Pope and his colleagues revealed how similar to the way generations of American girls had been captivated by images of female beauty embodied in the Barbie doll, young boys have been exposed to equally unrealistic standards in the form of action hero figures such as G.I. Joe, who morphed from a merely rugged appearance in the early 1960s to the exaggerated proportions of a bodybuilder by the 1990s.

Subsequently, researchers began to document the consequences of relentless exposure to such imagery. These include sharp increases in the number of male patients diagnosed with body-image-related eating disorders, compulsive behaviors, depression, and anxiety. Clinicians have also expressed concerns about the muscle, bone, and tendon injuries seen in still-growing adolescent boys who take up rigorous weightlifting regimens. Public health officials began to wage campaigns to educate men of all ages about the dangers of nutritional supplements and steroids.

Responses to the problems generated by media portrayals of idealized body images have come from public health, school, and federal government officials. The National Eating Disorders Association, formed in 2001, has engaged in prevention and advocacy efforts, as have a number of organizations dedicated to teaching children how to respond to the idealized body images they see in the media.

The fashion industry itself began to implement reforms after the widely publicized eating-disorder-related deaths of several female models in 2006. The Madrid Fashion Week barred models with a body mass index (BMI) of less than eighteen. Organizers began to require that models who wished to participate in such functions as Milan Fashion Week and London Fashion Week to first produce medical documentation of their health from an eating disorder specialist. During Milan Fashion Week in 2007, a clothing brand company launched a controversial newspaper and billboard ad campaign featuring nude images of a 68-pound woman accompanied by the slogan, “No Anorexia.” The campaign was intended to publicize the gruesome reality of the anorexia disorder, which, the campaign’s sponsors were quoted as saying, is “caused in most cases by the stereotypes imposed by the world of fashion.”

At the same time, advocacy groups such as the National Eating Disorders Association’s Media Watchdog program, which was founded in 1997 to encourage companies and advertisers to create healthier cultural messages about size, beauty, and weight, continued to pressure media outlets that persist in the promotion of unhealthy body images. The meteoric rise of social media in the early twenty-first century further impacted the prevalence of eating disorders among Americans and led to an increase in negative body image perceptions, especially among youth. A 2016 study by the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine found that the likelihood of developing an eating disorder correlated with the amount of time one spent on social media—those who spent more time per day on social media were more likely to develop an eating disorder.

Body Image and the Media Today

By 2024, there were an estimated 4.9 billion social media users around the world. According to the Pew Research Center, social media usage among adults in the United States grew from 5 percent using at least one social media platform in March 2005 to 72 percent in February 2021. YouTube and Facebook were the most widely used social media platforms. In 2023, an estimated 83 percent of American adults reported using YouTube, and 68 percent used Facebook. Among teens, the most popular social media platforms in 2022 were YouTube, with a massive 95 percent of teens reporting they used that platform according to Pew, and TikTok (67 percent). Other platforms included Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter (renamed "X"), Snapchat, WhatsApp, Reddit, and Nextdoor.

One notable social media trend in the early 2020s was the use of augmented reality (AR) filters. These apps or platform functions allow users to add to or edit their appearance in digital images of themselves, such as self-portrait photos ("selfies"). Changes created with AR filters may be fantastical, such as adding cat ears or a unicorn horn, or they can be subtle, such as adjusting the size and shape of one’s nose or the color of one’s eyes. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 led to increased reliance on social media and videoconferencing platforms such as Zoom, which subsequently caused an increase in users’ concern with their appearance on those platforms and an increase in the use of AR filters. Although Facebook banned distortion effect filters, such as FixMe, in 2019, by August 2020, distortion filters were allowed once more as long as they did not explicitly promote cosmetic surgery. By 2021, Snapchat reported that 200 million daily active users were using their filter function, Lenses, which had been launched in 2015. That year Facebook and its subsidiary Instagram reported that more than 600 million of their users had used at least one filter effect.

Much research in the early 2020s focused on the harmful impacts of social media on body image, especially among teens. A 2023 study revealed that teens and young adults who cut their social media usage in half experienced an immediate and significant improvement in their views of their appearance, including their weight. Researchers explained that the thousands of images of celebrities and influencers that young people are exposed to daily on social media, often augmented by AR filters, greatly increase the internalization of highly unattainable beauty ideals. Other studies focused specifically on selfies and the use of AR filters to create idealized images. One such study revealed the effect of modified selfies and viewer feedback on women who share selfies on social media, finding that modifying selfies reduces appearance satisfaction. Furthermore, receiving appearance-related comments on selfies increases self-objectification and the inclination to share objectifying selfies.

Researchers have likewise focused on finding successful methods of supporting and promoting body positivity on social media—a movement that challenged the ideal that only skinny bodies are attractive and gained steam in the 2010s and 2020s. A 2023 study revealed that when social media users viewed more body-positive images that diverge from appearance ideals, such as images showing various types of body shapes, it had the effect of improving body image and shifting societal attitudes about attractiveness.

These essays and any opinions, information or representations contained therein are the creation of the particular author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of EBSCO Information Services.

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