Existing research argues that the muscular male body ideal, often promoted in the media, is associated with male body dissatisfaction and increasingly problematic attempts to attain unrealistic body shape by young males. The present study sought to examine the influence of ‘‘lad magazines”, a highly popular media sector over the last decade, and also the role of dating, or relationship, status,...

BACKGROUND Appearance comparison has consistently been shown to engender body image dissatisfaction. To date, most studies have demonstrated this relationship between appearance comparison and body image dissatisfaction in the context of conventional media images depicting the thin-ideal. Social comparison theory posits that people are more likely to compare themselves to similar others. Since ...

Many scholars have recognized and studied the links between various sources of appearance-related pressure (e.g., media and interpersonal pressures to be mesomorphic) and men’s body image and well-being. Pornography is another medium of appearance-related pressure that is very rarely considered in this research. The present study incorporated pornography use into 2 models of men’s body image an...

This study experimentally tested the effects of exposure to television commercials using less thin models on mood, body focused anxiety and food intake, as compared to the effects of commercials using thin models. In a naturalistic setting, 110 young women were exposed to a neutral movie, interrupted by two commercial breaks. The commercial breaks contained real commercials using either less th...

The purpose of this study was to examine the prediction of eating disorder symptoms within an integrated theoretically-driven model of romantic attachment, social support, sexual approach styles and the internalization of the media’s portrayal of ideal body standards. A community sample of 671 women aged 19 to 88 years completed a series of self-report questionnaires. The findings supported a m...

To investigate the immediate and 12-months effects of a school-based intervention aiming to reduce risk enhance protective factors for eating disorder development in high school boys girls. In total, 4,149 adolescents from 30 schools were eligible inclusion 2,446 consented participate randomly allocated Healthy Body Image (HBI) or control group (classes as usual). The HBI is multicomponent cons...