14 DAY TRIAL // Confidence can easily be brought down with something as simple and apparently harmless as watching TV is, and we might not even realize it, a new study has revealed. Women who watch soaps or television series where there are many thin and attractive female characters perceive their own body differently afterwards, even if they know better than to compare themselves to something that cannot exist in real life, physorg informs.
As a rule, most women know that what they see in commercials and on TV does not, in any way, reflect reality, since there is an exact science behind the impeccable looks and wonderful bodies of those presented there. Still, when they’re watching television, even if they’re not drawing parallels between themselves and what they see, they actually are, the latest study says. Because of this, the effects on their self-esteem and body image can be crippling.
In order to establish what the presentation of beautiful, slim ladies in television productions does to the average women, researchers focused on “Friends,” the popular and long-running sitcom with the two exceptionally good looking female leads Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) and Monica (Courteney Cox-Arquette). Dr. Stephen Want, an assistant professor in Ryerson’s Department of Psychology, led the study, which is published as “The Influence of Television Programs on Appearance Satisfaction: Making and Mitigating Social Comparisons to Friends.” It shows just the extent to which images in the media affect an average woman’s confidence, even when she knows better than to relate to them.
“Our study showed two things. First, people have the tendency to make rapid comparisons of themselves to images on television programs even when they don’t think they are being affected. Second, when we are reminded that ‘real life’ doesn’t resemble what is seen on TV, and we can look at things with a critical eye, the comparisons become less relevant.” Dr. Want says to physorg. What this means is that, only when women are warned beforehand of the tricks used to make ladies on TV look this good, do they allow their image not to affect their confidence.
“There’s a lot of talk about the effect of media images on people’s satisfaction with their appearance. But the term ‘media images’ is used as a catch-all phrase. Most research focuses on fashion magazines and television commercials; we wanted to see if other images on TV achieved the same result.” Dr. Want further explains of the study. As it turns out, images on TV do have the same impact on the average woman.