BEAUTY SICKNESS 1

Beauty Sickness

Taylin Tyler

Seton Hill University

Author Note

Department of Psychology

t.tyler@setonhill.edu
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Introduction

An epidemic of beauty sickness has been throughout society for many, many years. The

idea that people compare their bodies to the people they seen on social media rather it is a model,

their role model, or someone in a magazine. Although beauty sickness can be in men or women,

it is more likely targeted in women. In the Ted Talk that I watch, it talked about how women are

really fascinated with weight and the way they look. Women tend to never be satisfied with their

appearance because society plays a role in what the “perfect” woman should look like. Society

sends out messages that beauty is the most important thing, that if you do not look like this then

you should change, and because society has the image of what the perfect body type is, it

increases the rate of depression and decreases self-esteem. Society makes people think that being

extremely skinny and being tan is in and any other person that is not in this image is not perfect.

Renee Engeln that person who did the Ted Talk on beauty sickness stated that beauty sickness is

what happened when women spend so much time not worrying about their education, their

career goals, their families, or their relationships, but yet they are too busy worrying about their

weight loss goals, the state of their arms, their abs, and their thighs. There will always be things

in society that makes you wonder rather you are good enough, if your hair is straight enough, if

you don’t look too fat or too fat. Society will always put out these images of what they believe

the “perfect” body shape is. The idea of beauty sickness is only really targeted towards women

because women are much more emotional than men. Women tend to care about what other

people think about them and not what they think about themselves. They rather be hit by a bus

than become fat. The idea of what the perfect body type is or the idea of what the perfect women

is has been in the world for decades. Women do not have it is easy because no matter what they
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say, do, or believe there is always someone out there who has an opinion on what they should

look like. The idea is that we want women to get out of the idea of beauty sickness. We want

women to become so much more comfortable with their own bodies and not really focus on just

beauty. Renee Engeln states some strategies to eliminate this epidemic of beauty sickness. She

starts off by saying we need to change our investment strategy which means we need to invest in

things that will actually last and stop looking at things that leave us obsessed with our body

image. Next she says that we need to not be so focused on what other people think about our

body because their opinion really shouldn’t play a huge factor in how we look at ourselves. The

topic of beauty and body image is never easy for a woman but it will never hurt to try to change

the way you think. It is not going to be an overnight process because there are steps that you

need to take.

Literature Review

Throughout all these reports, I learned that media plays a huge part in body

dissatisfaction, but not only media, family members plays a part in body dissatisfaction as well.

There were many different kinds of methods used from how long the media has been in use to

the idea that you can teach a parent how have a positive influence on their children about body

dissatisfaction. I learned that to actually do these kind of experiments, you have to actually use

participants who are in today’s day in age . You have to use young women to actually get the

most accurate result. Looking at the different reports that I’ve found, I learned that mothers are a

key influence on young women body image. The first report that I decided to look into was

called Randomized controlled trial of an online mother-daughter body image and well-being

intervention. In the report that was done by Phillippa C Diedrichs, Melissa J. Atkinson, Kirsty M.
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Garbett, Heidi Williamson, Emma Halliwell and Nichola Rumsey it was stated that body

dissatisfaction prospectively predicts depression and low-self-esteem during adolescence, and is

the most potent modifiable risk factor for eating disorders (p.3). Adolescences are pressured to

lose weight, and with the influences from their parents of dieting and the idea of having the

model body comes from society as well as their parents. One of the reports that I decided to look

at did as study with interventions. The people in charge of the research came up with the idea of

doing interventions because they believe that having face to face conversation can possibly be

much more efficient. The idea of these interventions is to help parents show their children

positive reinforcement and show their children that there are positive body images that they can

look at. I learned that there have been many interventions that are tended to help improve the

idea of body image and positive body image. I learned that interventions significantly improved

how adolescence look at themselves and how they look at their body. Although they have

interventions with the parents, it is much more difficult to really get through parents’ head

because they do not think that they play a part in the way their children look at themselves.

According to Diedrichs, et al. parents always tend to have some kind of excuse to why they can’t

actually participate in the interventions. Not only did they do face to face interventions they also

conducted internet-based interventions. The internet-based interventions can become another

access for parents and for these adolescences. The internet-based interventions can be accessed

anywhere at any time, and they can help meet the needs of what the problem is. The website was

made so they mother can help their children with positive information and tools that help them

foster the positive body image. What people tend to forget is that dissatisfaction in body image is

not only in teenagers, but yet it is also in adult. So the point of the intervention is so they the

mothers can be positive role models for their children (p.7). The results that were found that the
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mothers who used the website to help them have conversations with their daughters about having

respect for themselves and loving who they are.

The next report that I looked at was titled Facebook is linked to body dissatisfaction:

comparing users and non-users. This study was conducted by Samantha Stronge, Lara M.

Greaves, Peter Milojev, Tim West-Newman, Fiona Kate Barlow and Chris G. Sibley. The idea

behind this report was that social media plays a huge part in body dissatisfaction. According to

Stronge, et al. for women who use Facebook, a U-shaped curvilinear relationship was found

between age and body satisfaction; thus the gap between non-users and users in body satisfaction

was exacerbated among middle-age women (p.1). I think that this is trying to say that the

women who are actually on Facebook and other social media websites are more targeted to

having some kind of body dissatisfaction. It is stated that women use Facebook more than men

and in a more socially engaged way, indicating they have higher exposure to social media and

opportunity for social comparison (p. 201). So since this generation is more targeted around

social media there is a higher chance for more body dissatisfaction in young women than older

women, although older women may go through the same body dissatisfaction, it is just has bad

as the younger generation. In the report it states that Facebook has the potential o effect many

populations from many different countries (p.201). The idea is that social media plays a huge

part in body dissatisfaction, but Facebook is the one that is the most influential. If you are

constantly on social media (Facebook especially) then you are more likely to be exposed to body

dissatisfaction, but the people who do not use Facebook and do not really pay attention to social

media are less likely to become exposed to body dissatisfaction. The reason why people who are

more likely to use Facebook are more likely expose to body dissatisfaction is because people

tend to compare themselves to what society expects them to be. The reports show that people
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who use Facebook were less satisfied with their appearance than people who do not use

Facebook at all or regularly.

Research Design

If I were to conduct this project all over again, I would shoot for different things than the

other authors who conducted research before did. I would still focus on body image, but I think

that I would make the age range lower than the typical age range of the adolescence or the

middle age women. I wouldn’t focus on men because although men go through some kind of

body dissatisfaction, you are more likely to hear about body dissatisfaction in women instead of

men. My hypothesis or my research question would be: Do young women between the ages of 9-

15 have some kind of body dissatisfaction? I decided to use the ages 9-15 because although 9

years-old is a very young age, these generations are exposed to social comparison at young ages

as well as people in these generations can be so cruel. My independent variables would be

women between the ages 9-15 years-old (from all different cultures). My dependent variable

would be the different images that are being shown to the women. I decided that I wanted to used

different images because that what I can ask questions about what they think of the images and

get their honest opinions. With the images you can see if they believe the person being shown

has a “perfect” body, is too skinny or is too fat. This goes to why I decided to use people at a

young age, because people at this age are brutally honest. I plan to collect my data like in a

interview base, with just a few questions. I think that an interview method is the best method to

use, because it gives the participant more freedom to say what they feel about themselves and

about the images that are being shown. An example a of question would be: What are the things

you like or dislike about this person’s body? Another questions would probably be: What are the
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few things on her body that you wish you had on your body? I think open questions would help

start questions and help myself determine rather the participant has body dissatisfaction. I

personally think that I random sample would be better, because when you are doing a random

sample you are less likely to get groups of people that you have some kind of relationship with. I

would pick 20 people from the age range of 9-15, 3 people from each age level. Then I would

give numbers to each person. Then I would have a random number machine pick numbers and I

will eventually end up with two people in each age range. I wouldn’t say that my experiment

would be large, but it would be big enough so that I am able to actually conduct the experiment.

To make sure my project is ethical, I have to make sure that I am getting consent from the

parents of the participants. I would have to get consent because I would be working with people

who are underage. When it comes to confidentiality, I have to make sure that I am aware of what

I am saying and how I am saying it. At first I was thinking about having all the girls in one room

and having a discussion, but then I thought about some people may actually be ashamed about

their body weight. I do not want to make anyone uncomfortable when it comes to talk about their

weight and how they view themselves. Having that confidentiality will make the participants

open up much more because they will be able to trust you.

References

Diedrichs, P. C., Atkinson, M. J., Garbett, K., Williamson, H., Halliwell, E., Rumsey, N., Leckie, G.,

Sibley, C. & Barlow, F. K. (2016). Randomized controlled trial of an online mother-

daughter body image and well-being intervention. Health Psychology, 35 (9). pp. 996-

1006.

Stronge, S., Greaves, L. M., Milojev, P., West-Newman, T., Barlow, F. K., & Sibley, C. G. (2015).

Facebook is linked to body dissatisfaction: Comparing users and non-users. Sex Roles,

73(5-6), 200-213.