Every day, media and social feeds are bombarded with images of women’s bodies – the majority being what Western society considers the “ideal” physique. As a result, shaming (and more recently praising) of any bodies that are outside of this “ideal” has become commonplace.
In a unique study, University of Toronto’s Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education researchers Tim Welsh and Catherine Sabiston, along with graduate student Eva Pila, came together to look at how the media contributes to how people feel about their own bodies.
“We wanted to learn the impact of repeatedly seeing images of what one believes to be the ideal body,” says Welsh.
Although Welsh and Sabiston were both interested in answering this same question, they have two entirely different focuses within kinesiology. “I focus on the cognitive neuroscience approach, while Catherine looks more at emotional traits and responses,” says Welsh. “She had already done a lot of research on how people feel when they look at different body types, specifically on what is considered to be the ‘ideal body’ versus the above-average body so the timing to take this research further was perfect.”
The next step in Catherine’s research was to look at how people think about the body and the brain areas involved in those thoughts – the mechanisms of the brain and how they shape how people respond emotionally. “We saw this as a new way of looking at and analyzing body image data. Instead of just looking at how women respond when they see images of ultra-thin, average-size and above average-size female models, we looked at their cognitive response – how they process and react to the different images. We were also interested in whether women’s feelings of self-consciousness influenced how they would respond.”
To do this, graduate student Eva Pila recruited two groups of women between the ages of 18 and 25. “One group were women who have a very low tendency to feel self-conscious about their body,” says Pila. “The other was the opposite – women who had a high tendency to feel self-conscious about their body.”
Each group was then shown images of different bodies. On each image, there was a coloured target stimulus on one limb (for example, a red or blue dot on the hand or foot of the body in the picture). Then the women were asked – regardless of where the target was placed – to press a hand button if the circle was red, or press a foot pedal if the circle was blue.
“We were looking at response times and what is known as the body-part compatibility effect,” says Welsh. “The pattern of reaction times tells us if these women are matching or comparing their own body to the so-called ideal body that is more common in the media, or the less commonly seen above-average sized body.”
The results were eye-opening.
“Our findings showed that there is a tendency for women who are more self-conscious to compare and match their bodies, at a neurocognitive level, regardless of the body type they see. The women who were less self-conscious did not compare or match their body to all other bodies.”
Sabiston says it’s a finding with great implications for the media. “Even the newer advances we’ve seen lately in advertising campaigns and other forms of media that portray all body shapes and sizes may be futile among women who tend to be self-conscious about their body.”
The timing of this study coincides with news of Mattel’s release of new Barbie dolls in different sizes and backgrounds. This will be the focus of the research team’s next study. “We are interested in seeing how young girls compare themselves to these different body shapes and how it positively or negatively affects their responses in a similar process,” says Welsh. “The findings should be interesting.”