Your Preference for a Specific Body Shape Is Shaped by Television – Study Reveals

Reachers at the University of Durham in the UK discovered that the more TV you watch, the more you prefer thinner female bodies.

The results published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that people with minimal access to television, preferred full-body women, while those in the same communities who regularly watched TV preferred slimmer women.

The study held in several remote villages in Nicaragua in Central America demonstrates that body ideals are flexible and based on what our eyes consume. With a plethora of slim females in the media, the more television the Nicaraguans watched, the thinner they preferred the women.

“If there’s something that’s universal about attraction, it is how flexible it is,” Lynda Boothroyd, the study’s lead author and professor of psychology at Durham, told CNN News.

iMan Magazine visited Pexels, Pixabay and Unsplash, three popular online photography sites and searched for full-body women photos. The search results found no full-body women photos instead delivered images depicting very fit slim women.

The study reachers want TV and advertising managers to use actors, presenters and models of different shapes and sizes to counter the stigmatization of larger bodies.

“There needs to be a shift towards a ‘health at every size’ attitude, and the media has an important role to play in that,” said Boothroyd.