“Women, you know that
crummy feeling you get after leafing through a fashion
magazine chock full of models
who, let’s face it, look way better than you? A
new study, The Kate Moss
Effect, suggests that it‘s not all in your head”
(Jennifer Thomas, HealthScout).
There have been so many times in my life, and
I’m sure in other women’s
lives as well, that I feel totally inadequate in
comparison to, let’s say,
a Victoria’s Secret Model. I just have one question:
How is a woman ever supposed
to feel good about herself when the only thing
being consistently promoted
is perfection? There have been many experiments
done, in which doctors study
the effects that the pressure to have a perfect
body has on the average
female. However, I am going to concentrate on the Kate
Moss Effect for the simple
reason, that of all the studies I looked at, The Kate
Moss Effect seemed to be
the most realistic, and straight forward.
So let’s get back
to that good old feeling of sifting through the many
discouraging pages of a
modern day fashion magazine. The Kate Moss Effect is a
study based around the simple
everyday activity of viewing a publication crammed
with aptness. Basically,
women were gathered to look at pages bubbling with
models who were virtually
flawless and their reactions to this exposure were
then observed. To
be exact, researchers divided 91 Caucasian women, ages 18 to
31into two groups.
One group was shown advertisements for various everyday
products such as nail polish,
toothpaste, and gum. However, these ads featured
rail thin females, the virtual
living, breathing representation of
faultlessness. The
second group was shown ads for the same types of
merchandise. Except
the second group’s ads didn’t have people in them.
“Researchers found that
women who looked at advertisements featuring
stereotypically thin and
beautiful women showed more signs of depression and
were more dissatisfied with
their bodies after only one to three minutes of
viewing the pictures.
Depression levels registered a slight uptick, while
self-esteem was unchanged”
(Jennifer Thomas, Health Scout).
Laurie Mintz, the
lead author of the study and the associate professor of
educational and counseling
psychology at University of Missouri-Columbia said,
“The women who registered
the biggest drop in self image after viewing the
pictures were those who
already felt bad about themselves to begin with.” Mintz
basically implies in further
statements that it is a vicious cycle for a lot of
women who are constantly
impacted by these images and don’t even realize it is
harming their level of self-confidence.
After women viewed
these various ads and Mintz observed the results, she, along
with colleagues used three
different tests to measure different psychological
changes. These changes
included things such as depression, self-esteem, and
body satisfaction.
The Objectified Body
Consciousness Scale (The body satisfaction test) was
basically designed to see
how a woman really views herself in today’s extremely
judgmental society.
It asked questions to see how much a woman feels
responsible for not meeting
today’s “cultural standards.” One portion of the
questionnaire even asks
women to rate different body parts, such as their nose,
lips, waist, thighs, overall
weight, and body hair. (Just a reminder that the
body satisfaction test is
given after women have looked at ads featuring
flawlessness) Again, they
saw that the depression level of the participants in
group one, within a matter
of one to three minutes, went up, while the
participants in group two
showed a significantly lower rate of despair
Once the study was
completed, Mintz concluded that what shocked her the most,
was the fact that it only
took a matter of three minutes for a woman to start
downing herself. I can totally
relate to these findings. I can’t tell you how
many times a day I sit there
and say, “I wish I had her body...Why can’t I look
like that.... If only I
could change this...etc.” But the problem lies in the
fact that the cultural standards
have been set so high that this level of beauty
is practically unattainable.
The part that really makes me sick, is that most
of the women that read these
magazines and take the beauty advice from them are
probably your normal average
women, about 5’6” and 135 pounds. There is
absolutely nothing wrong
with that, but what these women are comparing
themselves to is an average
model. I’d say about 5’10”, 105 pounds. That
sounds almost miserable
to me. I like food too much to be doing that to my
body. I am 5’7” and
weigh 152 pounds and there is nothing wrong with that
either. However, I
also fall victim to the extremely high standards that
society has deemed acceptable.
One thing that I really
like about this study is that it provides women with an
assortment of ways to help
themselves. One suggestion was to avoid reading
fashion magazines all together.
They also remind us that half of what is
depicted on these unblemished
babes isn’t even real. Airbrushing has become a
way of life lately.
“Models in today’s ads can have portions of their bodies
digitally altered to erase
even the most minute mole, bulge, or asymmetry. Some
‘models’ depicted in ads
aren’t real people at all, but composites” (Jennifer
Thomas, Health Scout). And
last but not least, researchers say that we as women
need to define our own standards
for beauty. Don’t go off of what other people
say, or how they look, or
what is supposedly perfect. You should never have to
live up to anybodies standards
but your own. “You can ask yourself: ’What does
beauty mean to me?’ You
can decide beauty is a range or something internal or a
sparkle in the eye”(Jennifer
Thomas, HealthScout).
The main point that
I got out of this study is that humanity has set their
beauty standards at a level
that is bound to depress every female on this earth.
We as women just need to
remember that the average female is what is truly real.
People see you for you,
and not just some airbrush on the front of a Cosmo. Be
you... you can’t really
go wrong with that.