Your face is too round, your waist is too thick? You always feel that you are too fat, maybe you watch too much TV

In an age where beauty is everything, there are all kinds of strategies and techniques to help girls become more beautiful. Among them, the most important one is weight loss.

The comparison of before and after weight loss in TV commercials, the appreciation and pursuit of "thin beauties" by men in film and television works and in real life, all these examples are sending out attractive signals: being thin is comparable to plastic surgery, being thin is beautiful. Even women with healthy bodies find it difficult to get rid of the self-judgment of "not being thin enough, so not beautiful enough".

But who is it that makes us believe that thinness is the standard of beauty?

Watch more TV, love thin people more

A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology has pinpointed one of the culprits: television. The study on body image found that the more we watch TV, the more we like thinner female bodies.

One of the members leading the study is Professor Lynda Boothroyd of Durham University in the UK. They conducted research in multiple villages in remote areas of Nicaragua in Central America. Villagers in these areas rely on traditional agriculture and fishing for their livelihoods, and the popularity of television in the local area is very limited. The economic status of each village is similar, but due to different geographical conditions, some villages have electricity and television signals, and villagers have televisions installed in their homes; while other villages basically do not have such conditions.

A total of 299 men and women from seven local villages participated in the study. They completed a questionnaire about their ethnicity, education, income, hunger, language and TV exposure, and then rated pictures of female bodies of different shapes. The study found that villagers who watched TV frequently preferred thinner women with smaller waists; in contrast, villagers who rarely watched TV did not have such a preference.

Female body shapes at different body mass indexes (BMI) | References [1]

Zero TV experience, but can adjust preferences

What shapes the villagers' aesthetic preferences for female body shape?

To explore this question, the researchers showed villagers with little television experience a series of photos: some were of plump women, and some were of thin women. The results showed that after only 15 minutes of viewing these images, the villagers' preferred ideal body shape shifted in the direction of the pictures shown - after being exposed to pictures of plump women, the villagers preferred plump women; while after viewing pictures of thin women, the villagers preferred thin women.

"Our findings clearly show that people's perceptions of attractiveness are highly variable and influenced by what we are visually exposed to," noted Professor Boutroy.

Sample 1 of different body types | References [1]

Professor Boutroy has previously found the same phenomenon in developed industrial societies such as the UK. This study, in Nicaragua, a society that has not yet industrialized, verified the impact of watching TV on women's ideal body shape, once again proving the powerful role of mass media in shaping people's body aesthetics.

The villages in Nicaragua were chosen because people there had very similar ecological constraints such as nutrition, income and education, but different access to television. This meant the researchers were able to separate the effects of exposure to television from other factors, demonstrating a causal role for television viewing in shaping people's perceptions of ideal body shape.

Diverse display, each of the fat and thin has its own beauty

Since when did thinness and beauty become increasingly closely linked? Probably it started when television kept showing images of women with increasingly slim bodies. Female celebrities who were already very thin showed off their beautiful images, and as a generation of TV children who grew up, we naturally absorbed the idea that "thinness is beauty".

The representation of this “thin ideal” in the media may cause women to be dissatisfied with their bodies and even trigger eating disorders and depression.

Professor Boutroy and his colleagues called on television and advertising bosses to show the public images of various body shapes and sizes to reduce the pressure on women to pursue an "ideal body" or "thin body".

"Bosses in the TV and advertising industries have a moral responsibility to use actors, presenters and models of all body shapes and sizes, and to avoid stigmatising and mocking larger women. The media has a vital role to play in promoting attitudes change towards acceptance of healthy beauty for all body types."

If there is anything common to people's aesthetics, it is that the standard of beauty is subjective and flexible. The ancients understood this earlier than we do, and the phrase "Huan Fei Yan Shou" emphasizes that women of all shapes and sizes are beautiful in their own ways.

If you are too fat and your body is unhealthy, then you need to pay attention to it. But if you are already healthy, next time you are worried about not being thin enough, you might as well think about whether this "thin ideal" is reasonable. What shapes our aesthetic preference?

References

[1] Boothroyd, LG, Jucker, J.-L., Thornborrow, T., Barton, R, Burt, DM, Evans, EH, Jamieson, M., Tovee, MJ (in press). Television consumption drives perceptions of female body attractiveness in a population undergoing technological transition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

[2] https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-12/du-wtm121719.php

Author: Rouxi

Editor: Mai Mai