The Influence Of Fashion Media Exposure On Female College Student’s Restrained Eating Behavior

In the current society,fashion media has become the main source of fashion information for female college students,and the social and cultural concept of "thin is beautiful" prevalent in the media platform preaches to young women the benefits of having a slim and thin body,which implicitly influences women’s aesthetic concepts.At the same time,female college students are in the growth stage of seeking intimacy and desperately wanting to enhance their attractiveness,so they are more likely to take this thin ideal appearance as their body image goal,and a restrictive diet is a low-cost and easy way for female college students to achieve their goal.However,restrictive diets are not an effective way to reduce weight in the long run,but may lead to negative emotions such as low self-esteem and anxiety,and severe restrictive eaters may even develop eating disorders.Therefore,it is important to investigate the relationship between the fashion media environment and restrictive eating behavior of female college students and the mechanisms behind the adoption of restrictive eating behavior by female college students.This study explored the impact of fashion media exposure on female college students’ restrictive eating behavior from the perspective of environmental factors,and constructed a mediation model of fashion media exposure to female college students’ restrictive eating behavior using the internalization of thin ideality as a mediator.On this basis,the regulatory effects of physical appreciation in the first half of the mediation model and peer appearance social pressure in the second half of the model were explored.The first and second studies used a questionnaire method to test 521 female college students from Shanxi,Gansu,and Guangdong provinces,as well as 724 female college students from Shanxi and Guangdong provinces.The data were processed and analyzed using SPSS20.0 and PROCESS plug-ins.The results show:(1)Fashion media exposure can significantly and positively predict female college students’ restrictive eating behavior.(2)The internalization of thin ideality plays a significant mediating role between fashion media exposure and female college students’ restrictive eating behavior.(3)Body appreciation played a moderating role in the effect of fashion media exposure on the internalization of the thin ideal.(4)The relationship between fashion media exposure and restrictive eating behavior among female college students,as well as the mediating effect of internalization of thin ideation,are moderated by social pressure from peer appearance.From the perspective of the triple influence model of body image,combined with the theory of attitude stage change,acculturation theory,the overall body image model and the social comparison theory,this study explored the impact of fashion media exposure on female college students’ restrictive eating behavior and its internal mechanism from the two paths of attitude formation process and attitude influencing behavior.This study demonstrates the impact of the "thin ideal" appearance repeatedly presented in highly visual fashion media on the restrictive eating behavior of female college students.In addition,this study found that physical appreciation can alleviate female college students’ internalization of the "thin ideal" appearance,while high-level peer appearance social pressure can exacerbate female college students’ restrictive eating behavior.Finally,this study provides a new supplement to the intervention work on restrictive eating behavior among female college students by exploring the internal mechanisms by which fashion media exposure affects their behavior.