By Jennifer Mayer
The media”s influence, especially through magazines, is pertinent in forming young people”s perception of self, said Steve Thomsen, BYU associate communications professor, in a faculty lecture Friday Oct. 4.
“The media is a socializing agent,” said Thomsen, who has a doctorate in mass media communications. “Young men and women learn from the media. They identify their self concept-socially and physically-with that of the media.”
Through extensive research conducted in the last five years, Thomsen and several of his colleagues, including some BYU professors, have researched the prominence of media”s role in anorexia nervosa and bulimia and its sufferers.
According to the study, a direct correlation was found between the number of young women suffering from eating disorders and the magazines they read.
“They internalize the ”thin ideal,” and begin to recognize it does not match physical reality,” Thomsen said, “It creates a body image disturbance, where they have an extreme loathing of their physical appearance.”
Young women with this sort of disturbance then start to engage in extreme dietary actions, such as refusal to maintain normal body weight and intense dieting.
Health and fitness magazines were shown to have the most direct impact on body image disturbance.
Typically women athletes are first looked at for aesthetic beauty and then fitness or athletic ability, Thomsen said.
“We often see athletes-first as beautiful and then athletic,” he said.
Anorexia and bulimia sufferers use the magazines to serve the needs of the eating disorder, Thomsen said. It often leads to comparison rituals and self-mutilation.
“Magazines offer an emotional support, when those around them are being critical of them,” Thomsen said.
However, reading magazines is not always an indicator of an eating disorder.
“Their self esteem and physical self concept are the key issues,” Thomsen said.
