Mass Media And Female Body Image

The phenomenon of women's weight loss behavior, especially widely existing in the group of female college students in present society, has been a hot thesis arousing the attention in the world east and west, which frequently results in various physical and mental diseases because of excessive weight loss, such as eating disorder, depression, social concern, decrease in esteem and so on, which are attributed to the body image disorders in psychology. Body image refers to individual's multidimensional self-attitude towards his/her body especially in body's size, shape and beauty, which includes three parts of perception, attitude and behavior tendency. Body image is the basic part of body self, and body self is also the important basis of the concept"self". Study for many years indicates, female is more likely to suffer negative body image comparing with male, while adolescence, preadolescence and post-adolescence are important stages in the development and mature of body image. Female college students are just in the transient period .Therefore, exploring the reason of the weight loss awareness and behavior in female college students for body image disorder, will play an important role in help them with forming the healthy and right views of body and world.According to the preview of the theories about body image disorder in western society, the"thin ideal"standard for female body shape advocated and transmitted in mass media and the consequent social cultural pressure is the main cause of the negative body shape perception, body shape dissatisfaction and the weight behavior in female college students. Dwelling on the foreign theories in this field and focusing on fashion magazines, this paper studies on the 165 female college students in Shanghai Jiao Tong University with the questionnaire investigation, which concerning about the relationship between the exposure to"thin ideal"female images in fashion magazines and the internalization of the"thin ideal"body shape perception, the satisfaction towards body shape and the drive for thinness, and also make effort to find the effect of social important others and individual differences in this process.The result of the study demonstrates, the exposure to the"thin ideal"female model images has an significantly negative effect on the female college students including the internalization of"thin ideal"body shape standards, the satisfaction towards self body shape and the drive for thinness. Besides, social important others especially the companies and individual differences in age, grade and the BMI index also have great effect on body image of female college students. To conclude the findings in this study, this paper introspects on the"thin ideal"female body culture in the consumption society and the deep reasons behind it: social gender and rights, furthermore put forward with the proposal of media literacy intervention project. In the end, the paper makes conclusion with the aspects still having need to improve and the possible directions in further studies in the future.