The Psychology of Eating: From Healthy to Disordered Behavior

5

The Meaning of Size

Once food is eaten it is digested and incorporated into the body, and either
used for immediate energy or stored. Food therefore impacts upon the body’s
physical state and has the capacity to make changes in the way we look.
As a result, food choice takes place within the context of the body and the
meanings associated with body size and shape. This chapter explores the
meaning of size and examines media representations of the body and
the meanings associated with these images, and draws upon both the
quantitative and qualitative literatures.
This chapter covers the following:

• Media representations


• The meaning of sex


• The meaning of size

Media Representations

Women and men are represented in all forms of the media from comic
strips to television, but they are not represented in the same way, and much
research indicates that sexual differentiation pervades all media images.

Popular media

Comic strips
One study of comic strips reported that men appear more frequently than
women as both central and minor characters and that the most invisible
women are ethnic minority women (Etter-Lewis, 1988). Another study of
100 randomly chosen comic strips showed that men appeared with a wide