458 CHAPTER 10
ideal, they found almost no one who felt they were “too big or fat.” After 3 years
of watching television (primarily shows from Western countries), however, 75%
reported that they felt “too big or fat” at least some of the time. In addition, feeling
too big was associated with dieting to lose weight, which had become very preva-
lent: 62% of the girls had dieted within the prior 4 weeks.
In this study in Fiji, over three quarters of the participants reported that tele-
vision infl uenced their body image and that they wanted to change the shape
of their body to resemble those of the Western television characters. To emu-
late the characters, they changed their hairstyles, clothes, and behavior and tried
to reshape their bodies through dieting and, for some (11%), through purging.
Consider one girl’s comments: “When I look at the characters on TV... and I
just look at the body, the fi gure of that body, so I say, ‘look at them, they are thin
and they all have this fi gure’, so I myself want to become like that, to become
thin” (Becker et al., 2002, p. 513). Moreover, 30% of the participants viewed
the characters on TV as role models for work and career issues. The research-
ers noted that this profound change occurred over the course of only 3 years,
which is particularly dramatic given the long history of a fuller figure as the
Fijian cultural ideal.
A similar process might be occurring in industrialized societies, where ideals
of thinness saturate the environment through television, movies, magazines,
advertisements, books, and even cartoons. A number of studies have documented
associations between media exposure and disordered eating (Bissell & Zhou,
2004; Kim & Lennon, 2007; Stice et al., 1994); for instance, the more time ado-
lescent girls spent watching television, the more likely they were to report disor-
dered eating a year later (Harrison & Hefner, 2006). However, not all females
who view these media images end up with an eating disorder. Some people are
more affected than others, perhaps because of their combination of neurological,
psychological, and social risk factors. For them, chronic exposure to these types
of images may tip the scales and set them on a course toward an eating disorder
(Levine & Harrison, 2004).Objectifi cation Theory: Explaining the Gender Difference
How, exactly, the cultural ideal of thinness makes women vulnerable to eating
disorders is explained by objectification theory, which posits that girls learn to
consider their bodies as objects and commodities (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997).
Western culture promotes the view of male bodies as agents—instruments that
perform tasks—and of female bodies as objects mainly to be looked at and evalu-
ated in terms of appearance (see Figure 10.6). Marya Hornbacher recounted her
sense of being objectifi ed:I remember the body from the outside in.... There will be copious research
on the habit of women with eating disorders perceiving themselves through other
eyes, as if there were some Great Observer looking over their shoulder. Looking,
in particular, at their bodies and finding, more and more often as they get older,
countless flaws.
(1998, p. 14)
Implicit in Hornbacher’s musings about her perceptions of her body is the sense
of her body as an object—to be looked at and evaluated and, all too frequently,
found defective.
According to the theory, objectifi cation encourages eating disorders because
female bodies are evaluated according to the cultural ideal, and women strive to
have their bodies conform so that they will be positively evaluated. As they inter-
nalize the ideal of thinness, they increase their risk for eating disorders (Calogero,
Davis, & Thompson, 2005; Thompson & Stice, 2001)—especially in combination
with learning to see their bodies as objects from the outside: As Hornbacher noted,
if they hold an ideal of thinness and see their bodies as objects, they become moreObjectifi cation theory
The theory that girls learn to consider their
bodies as objects and commodities.