Conquering the Thin Ideal: An Examination of Media Literacy in Young Women (2011)

Undergraduates: Katie Hanna, none none none

Faculty Advisor: Millie Maxwell
Department: Psychology & Neuroscience

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The media exerts a powerful influence over our society, but over time it has become evident that these effects are often negative and damaging. Pressures placed on young girls to be thin or to look a certain way are increased greatly by the media, and previous research has shown that greater media consumption can be related to increases in the prevalence of eating disorders amongst various populations. Media literacy interventions, which teach individuals how to be smart consumers of media, have proven successful in decreasing the harmful effects of the media on body image and self-esteem. The present study used archival data and a mixed methods approach to explore the efficacy of a media literacy intervention in teaching high school females about the ways the media influences them. This media literacy group was compared to a control group which received a relational aggression intervention. While statistical analyses demonstrated that the effects of the intervention may have waned over time, a qualitative analysis of letters written by participants in each group to a young girl supposedly struggling with body image revealed clear differences in each group’s approach to body image, suggesting that the media literacy intervention may have been effective after all in altering participants’ views on media and body image.