Women's Self-Evaluation And Fashion Magazine Reading: Linkages Between Women's Self-Esteem, Body-Image, Appearance Schema And Media Images In Shanghai, China

According to Fallon (1990), body image is"the mental image we hold of our bodies". Rosenberg (1965) defined self-esteem as"a favorable or unfavorable attitude toward the self". The topic of body image has been studied by scholars in a variety of fields such as communication (Botta, 1999; Harrison, 2000), psychology (Cash & Szymanski, 1995; Hargreaves & Tiggemann, 2003), and textiles and clothing (Jung, Lennon, & Rudd, 2001; Rudd & Lennon, 2001). Nonetheless, it is still a relatively new domain which needs further research, especially in China. As an inter-disciplinary subject, intercultural communication attaches great importance to studying socio-cultural phenomena by integrating relevant subjects. On the theoretical basis of mass media communication and psychology, the current study investigates the relationship between media exposure and women's self-evaluation indicated by psychological factors like body image/ body-esteem, self-esteem, appearance schema among women in Shanghai. As most of the existing research projects were conducted by overseas scholars, this study fills this blank by presenting the issue from the Chinese perspective. Hopefully, the findings will arouse Chinese people's awareness of media effects, thus creating a media environment to promote a sound concept of female beauty.This thesis adopts the research methodology of literature studies and quantitative methods through questionnaires with a sample of 155 women living in Shanghai. After the Introduction, Chapter 2 clarifies relevant concepts of this study in the field of psychology and mass media based on the literature review. Important theories and measurements are introduced. Chapter 3 gives an overview of the current study and proposes six hypotheses based the literature review and research purposes. Chapter 4 elaborates on the research methodology of current study, explaining participants, materials and research procedure. Chapter 5 reports the research findings and makes analyses accordingly. The last chapter summarizes this research, identifies the limitations and puts forward suggestions for future studies. Results of the current study supported that media exposure did affect women's body image and self-esteem, but in a more complex and interactive manner. Positive effect on women may exist despite the general acknowledged negative effects. Women's appearance schema turned out to be a significant predictor in the interaction between media images and body images. Individual factors were also found to be significant.