Beauty Magazines and Anorexia
ENGLISH FINAL PROJECT
TITLE: Can the beauty magazine be held responsible for anorexia?
NAME: KATIA TAKKOY
Can the beauty magazine industry be held responsible for anorexia?
“Security”, “mental strength”, “self confidence”, “identity”, “care”, all these words having a common source, starvation. (Ogden, 2010, p.220). And although it may make no sense to most of us it surely holds a lot of meaning to an anorexic patient. But who is responsible for the link between starvation and all those positive words? Who should we blame for this 360 degree reversal of the image of starvation, from hunger due to poverty in some African countries to the image of someone successful with high self confidence that deserves love affiliation and care? A great amount of research has been dedicated in revealing whether or not the beauty magazine industry is to be held responsible for anorexia and the disordered believes that come with it, a subject that has been greatly debatable for years. A large amount of research indicates that beauty magazines have a clear cut effect on body image, while other sources claim that the root of the problem lays somewhere else, and that beauty magazines should not be blamed for the outburst of anorexia.
To begin with, Stice, Spangler and Agras(2001), carried out an experiment in which they randomly assigned adolescent girls to receive a free 15-month subscription to a teenage magazine. Through this study they found no direct effect of increased magazine reading on any of the body dissatisfaction or dieting variable they were testing, instead they found a moderating effect on the variable of social support, whereby girls who initially had low levels of social support showed increased body dissatisfaction, dieting and bulimic symptoms, with increased exposure to beauty magazines. Therefore Stice, et al., argued that it is not exposure to magazine reading as such which leads teenage girls to disordered eating patterns such as anorexia but other
TITLE: Can the beauty magazine be held responsible for anorexia?
NAME: KATIA TAKKOY
Can the beauty magazine industry be held responsible for anorexia?
“Security”, “mental strength”, “self confidence”, “identity”, “care”, all these words having a common source, starvation. (Ogden, 2010, p.220). And although it may make no sense to most of us it surely holds a lot of meaning to an anorexic patient. But who is responsible for the link between starvation and all those positive words? Who should we blame for this 360 degree reversal of the image of starvation, from hunger due to poverty in some African countries to the image of someone successful with high self confidence that deserves love affiliation and care? A great amount of research has been dedicated in revealing whether or not the beauty magazine industry is to be held responsible for anorexia and the disordered believes that come with it, a subject that has been greatly debatable for years. A large amount of research indicates that beauty magazines have a clear cut effect on body image, while other sources claim that the root of the problem lays somewhere else, and that beauty magazines should not be blamed for the outburst of anorexia.
To begin with, Stice, Spangler and Agras(2001), carried out an experiment in which they randomly assigned adolescent girls to receive a free 15-month subscription to a teenage magazine. Through this study they found no direct effect of increased magazine reading on any of the body dissatisfaction or dieting variable they were testing, instead they found a moderating effect on the variable of social support, whereby girls who initially had low levels of social support showed increased body dissatisfaction, dieting and bulimic symptoms, with increased exposure to beauty magazines. Therefore Stice, et al., argued that it is not exposure to magazine reading as such which leads teenage girls to disordered eating patterns such as anorexia but other
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