Thin, sexy women and strong, muscular men: grade-school children's responses to objectified images of women and men

Sex Roles: A Journal of Research,  Nov, 2003  by Sarah K. Murnen,  Linda Smolak,  J. Andrew Mills,  Lindsey Good

• E-mail
• Print
• Link

Objectification theory posits that the ubiquitous objectification of women in our culture encourages body dissatisfaction, eating problems, and other mental health concerns among girls and women (Frederickson & Roberts, 1997). There are data that show that women are objectified in the media, that girls and women experience a high rate of body dissatisfaction and eating problems, and that exposure to objectified media images of women is related to the experience of self-objectification and body shame among women. One purpose of the present study was to examine the links between these variables from a developmental perspective by examining how grade-school girls responded to objectified images of women. A second purpose was to examine how grade-school boys responded to objectified images of men. Although such images of men are less common in our culture, there is a growing concern that they, too, might be problematic.

Objectification of women and girls in our culture is pervasive (Frederickson & Roberts, 1997). In the media women's bodies are more likely to be shown to advertise products and there is often a focus on parts of the body, rather than the whole body, which emphasizes the view of woman as an object (e.g., Archer, Iritani, Kimes, & Barrios, 1983; Kilbourne, 1994). Images of women are often sexualized, which sends the message that men may "possess" women's bodies (see Frederickson & Roberts, 1997). Greater sexual objectification of women than men has been found in many media realms including fashion and fitness magazines (Rudman & Verdi, 1993), "MTV" (music television) commercials (Signorielli, McLeod, & Healy, 1994), and prime-time television commercials (Lin, 1998).

In addition to being portrayed as sex objects, women presented in the media are unrealistically thin (see Gilbert & Thompson, 1996; Levine & Smolak, 1996 for reviews). Playboy centerfold models, Miss America contestants, female television characters, and models in women's magazines have all gotten thinner across time (Garner, Garfinkel, Schwartz, & Thompson, 1980; Mazur, 1986; Silverstein, Perdue, Peterson, & Kelly, 1986) whereas average American women have become heavier (Spitzer, Henderson, & Zivian, 1999).

Discrepancies between women's actual body size and the ideal body size presented in the media are likely to occur and can lead to body dissatisfaction. Body dissatisfaction is so common among women as to be described as "normative" (Rodin, Silberstein, & Striegel-Moore, 1985). Children as young as 6 years have been found to express body dissatisfaction and concerns about their weight (Flannery-Schroeder & Chrisler, 1996; Smolak & Levine, 1994).

This experience of body dissatisfaction is linked to the existence of objectified images of women, according to much research. Groesz, Levine, and Murnen (2002) conducted a meta-analysis of the experimental research that related exposure to thin images and body dissatisfaction; they found that, across 43 samples, those groups of girls and women exposed to thin images of women expressed more body dissatisfaction than did control groups. A similar effect, although smaller, was found in the correlational research (Groesz, Murnen, & Levine, 2001). Such studies suggest that the media do have an effect on viewers, although in the analysis of the experimental literature the effect was stronger among those who were more vulnerable, such as those with a diagnosed eating disorder.

These issues should be examined from a developmental perspective to understand better when and why some girls begin to look at objectified images of women and use them for self-comparison purposes. We know that during late childhood and early adolescence social comparison plays a significant role in self-perception and that girls whose body shapes are further from ideal report greater dissatisfaction with their bodies (Levine & Smolak, 1998; Smolak & Levine, 2001). What role do objectified images of women play in young girls' views of their bodies?

We also need to understand these processes better among boys. Although the objectification of women is more common, there seems to be an increased emphasis on the objectification of men across time (e.g., Thompson, 2000). However, the nature of the objectified image is quite different. Rather than a thin, sexy object that someone else can "consume," the image of men emphasizes muscularity. Pope and colleagues studied the portrayal of action figures across time and found that they have become unrealistically muscular over the last 20 years (Pope, Olivardia, Gruber, & Borowiecki, 1999). It is possible that media images of muscular men encourage men to have larger, more muscular bodies and are contributing to men's body dissatisfaction problems, and possibly to "body dysmorphic disorder," and unhealthy behaviors such as anabolic steroid use to try to increase muscularity (Anderson, 1990; Labre, 2002; Pope et al., 1999; Pope & Katz, 1994; Pope, Katz, & Hudson, 1993). Researchers have measured boys' awareness of the muscular ideal (Smolak, Levine, & Thompson, 2001) and their "drive for muscularity" (McCreary & Sasse, 2000), and have found these constructs to predict the use of muscle-building techniques in boys. However, we have limited information about how strongly the muscular ideal might be linked to body problems in boys.