Body Image And Media Essay

Body Image, and Media:

Men experience ideal body standards and beauty myths similar to women. Male models are photo shopped and edited to achieve the impression of perfection. Often the male beauty standard is hyper-masculine and heterosexual. Famous male movie and television characters are often strong and aggressive such as super heroes. It is estimated that 10 million men will suffer from a clinically significant eating disorder in the United states. Body image dissatisfaction is often thought to be a women’s problem, but in reality it is prevalent among all genders. (Bodell, Forney, & Keel, 2014). Compared to the ample research pertaining to women and body image, there has been diminutive exploration done on men and body dissatisfaction. Peat, Peyerl,

The theory for why the researchers got the results they did once again relates to the Social comparison theory (Festinger, 1954). The ideal male body currently portrayed in the media is young, muscular, and lean. Since the media most commonly portrays younger men it may be that the older men do not connect with the images. Older men are more likely to find relevance in comparing themselves to men closer to their age. It is possible then that the ideal male body shape and size is of greater importance early in the life span and may become less emphasized with age (Peat, Peyerl, Ferraro, & Butler 2011). There are limitations with in this study. All participants were Caucasian and college educated. The study did not asses for sexual orientation as a potential variable. Further, BMI was not directly measured, therefore the potential for BMI to be inaccurate because of over or under estimation of height, weight, or both, is a potential concern. (Peat, Peyerl, Ferraro, & Butler 2011). Although this study contains specific limitations it is a start to studying and understanding body image dissatisfaction in