Energy Crisis

Objective: More and more number of studies show that the influence of thin models have a negative impact on young women's body image. The purpose of this study is to answer two questions (1) Is it true that displaying thin models are the ideal makes for good advertising?(2) Is the thin ideal really detrimental to adult women?

The advertising industry seems reluctant to change its approach of using ultra thin models and argue that "thiness" sells more and the fact that this is business and these models sell the products. This arguement is commonly used but there is little support for this view.

Method: An experiment called the Snowball Sampling was conducted to recruit non student women through email. It consisted of 202 women of which 96% were caucasian and 88% were resident of UK. Of which 59 formed the control group, while 65 and 78 formed two experimental group. Demographic information included age, income, relationship status and Body Mass Indes (BMI). The analysis showed that there were no major differences between the three groups of women in terms of age, income and relationship status nor was there any difference in the BMI of the women of each group. It was classified as normal. Though there was a corelation between BMI and age, so it was decided to use BMI and age as covarities in all statistical analyses in order to detect body focused anxiety.

Conclusion: The result of experiments shows that body size does not matter as much as the advertising industry claims infact size doesn not matter at all. Instead, by using attractive average size models, advertising could avoid body-focused anxiety in a large majority of women while still selling products successfully.

...