Helga Dittmar
Social and Health Psychology Research Group
Department of Psychology, University of Sussex, England
Helga Dittmar is a social psychologist who obtained her DPhil from the University of Sussex in England in 1990. Her research on socio-cultural influences on body image, including the impact of media images, forms part of her wider work on the impact of our consumer society on individuals' sense of identity and well-being. The research also encompasses studies on materialism and compulsive buying.
Dittmar’s research has attained international recognition, as evidenced by numerous TV and radio appearances, as well as interest from policy makers. She is associate editor for the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology with special responsibility for body image and eating. Her most recent book Consumer Culture, Identity and Well-Being is forthcoming in the prestigious European Monographs in Social Psychology Series.
She has received numerous grants, the most recent from the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council, which examined the impact of idealized models in advertising on women’s body-related thoughts, emotions, and behaviour. She is a Reader in Psychology at the University of Sussex, where she received an award for Excellence in Teaching in 2002. She is also involved in the mentoring and training of junior researchers and postgraduate students and has been the programme director of the MSc in Applied Social Psychology.
Does size matter? The impact of idealized media models on girls’, women’s and men’s body image
The mass media typically use ultra-thin female models, yet there is growing evidence that exposure to such an unrealistic beauty ideal leads to body dissatisfaction in many girls and women. Thus, we know that ultra-thin media models often have a negative impact, but this still leaves further issues to be addressed.
First, vulnerability factors make women more or less responsive to thin media models, particularly whether or not they have internalized the socio-cultural thinness ideal. Second, the psychological process through which women come to feel bad about their bodies in response to thin models centers on discrepancies between their actual self (how they look) and their ideal self (how they would like to look). Third, advertisers typically defend the use of ultra-thin models with the argument that these images “sell”, but we can demonstrate that alternative models with a healthy body size are equally effective in advertising. Fourth, girls as young as 5-7 years old reported lower body-esteem and a greater desire to be thinner after seeing ultra-thin Barbie dolls.
Finally, there is new evidence to suggest that men also experience lowered body image after exposure to muscular ideal models. This evidence converges in suggesting that idealised media models are a significant cause of body dissatisfaction, which can lead to unhealthy consequences, including negative self-perception, depressed mood, and extreme body-shaping behaviours. Yet, advertising effectiveness is not compromised by using alternative, average-size models, at least as far as women are concerned. These findings (a) support the use of more responsible advertising policies, and (b) interventions to educate individuals to be critical of unhealthy media images, and to treat body size/muscularity as a less central source of self-worth.