Undergraduate Women\u27s Self-Reported Body Image After Exposure to Weight-Related versus Nonweight-Related Media Images

The proposed study aims to determine whether there is a relationship between exposure to weight-related media images and self-reported body image. About 60 undergraduate women at Bowling Green State University will participate in the study. Half of these women will view five weight-related media images and the other half will view five nonweight-related media images. After exposure to either the experimental or control condition, the women will be asked to complete the Body Ideals Questionnaire as well as reveal their age, year in school, race/ethnicity, and number of women’s studies courses taken on a survey. Correlational data will be obtained from the survey and questionnaire. It is hypothesized that women exposed to the weight-related media images will report higher scores on the Body Ideals Questionnaire, indicating high importance placed on various features of their body along with a large difference between that part of their body and their ideal image of that feature. It is also hypothesized that Caucasian women will report higher BIQ scores than women of color, younger women will report higher BIQ scores than older women, and women exposed to more education about media effects on women (i.e. more women’s studies courses) will report lower scores on the BIQ