Objectification Theory-Case Study

Objectification Theory-Case Study

 Objectification Theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997) is a theory based on the idea that females are prone to internalize an observer‘s perspective as a primary view of their own physical bodies. This theory argues that girls and women subject their body to constant monitoring, which in turn leads to body dissatisfaction and sometimes, even eating disorders. Whilst body objectification is increasing in women, it has made women and girls make a conscious effort to change their physical appearance through any way possible. This can include diet and exercise changes, which in some cases may be beneficial, but a lot of the time these changes come through surgery and unhealthy eating habits, which in turn leads to 12 disorders such as bulimia and anorexia. Fredrickson & Roberts (1997) explained that a woman’s body is commonly viewed for its use by others, particularly for pleasure.

According to Fredrickson & Roberts (1997) all females experience some form of body objectification, but it can vary between women and girls depending on age, class, sexuality and ethnicity. When a woman is subjected to body objectification, this then leads to body surveillance and body dissatisfaction. Body Surveillance has been described as constantly monitoring yourself in terms of viewing one’s body from an outsider’s perspective. Body surveillance can then result in body dissatisfaction by contributing to the realization of a discrepancy between one’s own body and an internalized body ideal (Fredrickson & Roberts 1997). In western cultures it has been shown that women report higher levels of body objectification, than men, and that women learn to internalize an observer‘s perspective of their bodies more so than men. Radford (2007) completed a scientific review of Mental Health practice which expressed the idea of American women’s mental health being constantly affected by the media.

 Radford claims that most women are involved in a physically and psychologically damaging battle with their weight and inability to live up to social ideals. This allegedly leads most women to eating disorders, body dissatisfaction, and low self-esteem. It also states that even though these claims have been widely repeated in books, news related media, and journals both popular and scholarly these assumptions have received very little critical attention. Radford heavily focuses on the idea of the Barbie doll depicting the perfect body image of what a girl, or women should aim for. The review explains how there has been many studies that have suggested that the media influences body image, but have lacked a specific conclusion on whether women find models, such as Kate Moss more attractive or prettier, or whether it is simply because of her stick thin figure. Radford makes reference to other 13 articles claiming the lack of answers on this subject. The role of socio-cultural factors in the aetiology of eating disorders has been widely accepted. Nevertheless, how or by whom the pressure to be thin is transmitted to young girls remains unclear (Field et al, 1999).

Stephen & Perera (2014) conducted a study where by 30 female Malaysian and Chinese participants aged between 18 and 23 were recruited from the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus. They were asked to wear a tight fitting, grey tank top and bicycle shorts so that the body shape of each individual was visible. They compared differences in preferences, attractiveness and health, between groups exposed to images of models of varying attractiveness and body weight. Results indicated that participants preferred a lower weight for attractiveness than for health. Furthermore, women’s but not men’s preferred BMI (Body mass index) for attractiveness, but not health, was influenced by the type of media images to which they were exposed, suggesting that short term exposure to model images affect women’s perceptions of attractiveness but not health. Similar results can be seen in a study completed by Champion & Furnham (1999). Their participants consisted of 203 teenage girls of different cultures. Each girls BMI was calculated. They were then asked to indicate which of five categories; `thin', `slightly underweight', `just right', `slightly overweight' or `fat' they felt they belonged to. A pictorial scale was then presented to each participant, consisting of a series of seven line drawings of the female figure, labelled from A-G, ranging from extremely thin on the left to obese on the right. The participants were asked to indicate which figure they considered to be most like them, which they considered the norm and finally, which figures they would most like to look like.

Overall, the results concluded that many participants in this study believed themselves to be slightly overweight or obese, when in fact only 32% of them could actually be defined as this 14 according to health statistics. Furthermore 54.1 % of all girls wished to have a thinner body shape and 53.8% even wished for a body shape thinner than that which they perceived as normal. Additionally, age seemed to play a huge factor on overall body satisfaction. It was found that the older group of girls who were aged 18 and above expressed more dissatisfaction with their weight, more dissatisfaction with various body parts and more dissatisfaction with their general body image, than girls from the youngest age group, who were under the age of 18. Krahe & Krause (2010) examined the influence of thin and normal weight models. The participants they used were 50 female undergraduate students at a university in Germany, all of which were of Caucasian origin. They were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions. These included thin models and normal weight models. The average age of the participants was 22.2 years. Their results concluded that women who saw advertisements depicting thin models were more likely to choose the diet variant of a snack than women who saw the same advertisements in which the original model’s image was manipulated to be of normal size. 64% of participants in the thin model condition, but only 28% of participants in the normal model condition, chose the diet snack over the normal snack. It is clear from the research such as Stephen & Perera (2014) that body dissatisfaction is prominent in females aged between 18 and 23. All three of the studies mentioned ranging from 1999 to 2014, found that girls preferred a slimmer figure to what they have themselves, were conscious of their weight and or believed that their own weight was above what the healthy norm should be.