Television images and adolescent girls' body image disturbance

The impact of media images on adolescents' body image and thin ideal endorsement has been consistently asserted in the body image literature, yet has remained inadequately tested. I used social comparison theory and critical viewing with a sample of 214 high schoolgirls to predict adolescents' body-image disturbance and thin ideal endorsement. Media variables accounted for 15% of the variance for drive for thinness, 17% for body dissatisfaction, 16% for bulimic behaviors, and 33% for thin ideal endorsement. Results suggest that body image processing is the key to understanding how television images affect adolescent girls' body-image attitudes and behaviors.