Diverse bodies in the media could alter self-perception in the best way possible
It’s a Sunday night and you’re sitting on the couch watching your favourite television show. During the break, a commercial comes on starring a sun-kissed blonde on the beach wearing a tiny bikini that covers not-so-much of her very tiny figure. All you can think of is, “Whoa, I wouldn’t mind having a body like that.”
Does this sound familiar? If it does, you’re not the only one. It’s not news that the media constantly bombards society with images of very slim-figured women, and not much else. Women are fed the notion that the ideal body is one which is extremely thin and that, once a woman achieves this image, everything else in her life will fall into place. She will finally get her Prince Charming, her social life will be livelier than ever, and she could never be happier.
A new study published on PLOS ONE has revealed that when women are shown pictures of other women with ranging body sizes, participants quickly become more comfortable with varying sizes. This implies that if the media portrayed more diverse body sizes in advertisements, movies, and soon women would be more accepting of the fact that bodies come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, not just size “zero.” This would be a great step towards giving women the chance to accept and love their bodies for what they are, instead of comparing themselves to unrealistic and images that may be damaging to self-esteem.
When the women were shown photos of anorexic women in the PLOS ONE study, attitudes towards these images also became more positive. “Showing them thin bodies makes them like thin bodies, more, and showing them fat bodies makes them like fat bodies more,” said Lynda Boothroyd, a psychology researcher at Durham University in England who led the study. What women see in the media is what women will accept as the “norm,” which many will devote themselves to attempting to emulate. But what if there was not just one single size that captured the essence of perfection? Imagine watching the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, but instead of seeing extremely thin models with larger breasts being categorized as “plus size models,” real plus sized models, as well as women with varying body sizes ranging from super thin to super curvy, were walking down that same runway.
The idea sounds foreign and is hard to picture because society is so used to the same body type flooding the media, but it is not an impossible one. The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty is just one of the many campaigns trying to introduce this idea of showing real diversity among women and altering the definition of beauty. Based on the findings of the global study “The Real Truth About Beauty: A Global Report,” Dove launched the campaign for Real Beauty in 2004. The study revealed that only 2 per cent of women around the world describe themselves as beautiful. In 2011 the study was revisited, questioning over 1,200 ten to 17 year olds to see what had changed. The study revealed that 72 per cent of the girls said they felt tremendous pressure to be beautiful, and that only 11 per cent felt comfortable using the word beautiful to describe their looks. The campaign began a global conversation about a need for a wider definition of beauty, as media’s definition of beauty was limiting and unattainable. The campaign made many efforts to change the definition of beauty into a source of confidence, not anxiety. Dove developed the Self-Esteem Fund as an agent of change, creating more open-minded commercials to inspire women to become open to changing the definition of beauty. If women can collectively decide that this is the type of message they want to see in the media because they are tired of the limiting standards on what can be defined as beautiful, they could use their agency to start a change.