Health and Beauty Magazine Reading and Body Shape Concerns among a Group of College Women

Abstract

Research indicates that exposure to thin ideal images in women's magazines is associated with heightened concerns for body shape and size in a number of young women, although the media's role in the psychopathology of body image disturbance is generally believed to be mediated by personality and sociocultural factors. Here, data from a survey of 340 college-age women (ages 18–25) were used to test a structural equation model that examined three potential factors—hope, beliefs about men's expectations for female thinness, and expected weight gain or loss in five years—that might mediate the relationship between reading women's magazines and body shape and size concerns. The study found health and fitness magazine reading was linked directly to body shape concerns as well as indirectly through beliefs about men's thinness expectations and to a lesser degree through expected future weight gain or loss. Beauty and fashion magazine reading, however, was linked to body shape concerns only indirectly via beliefs about men's thinness expectations. Hope was not influenced directly by reading either type of magazine, nor did it mediate the relationship between reading and body shape concerns.