The Kate Moss Effect

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Recommended: Beauty standards and how they affect women

The Kate Moss Effect

“Women, you know that crummy feeling you get after leafing through a fashion

magazine chock full of models who, let’s face it, look way better than you? A

new study, The Kate Moss Effect, suggests that it‘s not all in your head”

(Jennifer Thomas, HealthScout). There have been so many times in my life, and

I’m sure in other women’s lives as well, that I feel totally inadequate in

comparison to, let’s say, a Victoria’s Secret Model. I just have one question:

How is a woman ever supposed to feel good about herself when the only thing

being consistently promoted is perfection? There have been many experiments

done, in which doctors study the effects that the pressure to have a perfect

body has on the average female. However, I am going to concentrate on the Kate

Moss Effect for the simple reason, that of all the studies I looked at, The Kate

Moss Effect seemed to be the most realistic, and straight forward.

So let’s get back to that good old feeling of sifting through the many

discouraging pages of a modern day fashion magazine. The Kate Moss Effect is a

study based around the simple everyday activity of viewing a publication crammed

with aptness. Basically, women were gathered to look at pages bubbling with

models who were virtually flawless and their reactions to this exposure were

then observed. To be exact, researchers divided 91 Caucasian women, ages 18 to

31into two groups. One group was shown advertisements for various everyday

products such as nail polish, toothpaste, and gum. However, these ads featured

rail thin females, the virtual living, breathing representation of

faultlessness. The second group was shown ads for the same types of

merchandise. Except the second group’s ads didn’t have people in them.

“Researchers found that women who looked at advertisements featuring

stereotypically thin and beautiful women showed more signs of depression and

were more dissatisfied with their bodies after only one to three minutes of

viewing the pictures. Depression levels registered a slight uptick, while

self-esteem was unchanged” (Jennifer Thomas, Health Scout).

Laurie Mintz, the lead author of the study and the associate professor of

educational and counseling psychology at University of Missouri-Columbia said,

“The women who registered the biggest drop in self image after viewing the

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