New York: Despite hating magazines that use super-skinny models, women continue to buy them 'thinspiration'.
A new report has revealed the secret of how some fashion and beauty magazines continue to attract devoted audiences, even though they glamorise models with unattainable figures that would seem to taunt normal-sized women.
The research suggests that some readers, rather than comparing themselves unhappily with the thin models, derive 'thinspiration': the belief that they can make themselves look just as attractive as the models they see in these magazines.
But the study is warning these women that they the magazines are not positive inspiration.
But Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick, author of the study and professor of communication at Ohio State University said: 'Women get the message that they can look just like the models they see in the magazines, which is not helpful.
'It makes them feel better at first, but in the long run women are buying into these thinness fantasies that just won't come true.'
And the more 'thinspired' a woman felt - the less likely she was to actually get any weight-loss benefits in reality.
The study found that women who felt greater 'thinspiration' by viewing images of thin models were actually less likely to engage in weight-loss behaviors.
Professor Knobloch-Westerwick said: 'They felt better about their body instantly when viewing the images and related content.
'They weren't thinking about what they had to do to look like these models.'
The study, which appears online in the journal Health Communication, involved 51 female college students.
The women were told they would be evaluating magazine articles and advertisements.
In experiments like this, participants often just thin-ideal images, without any accompanying text, during a single experimental session.
But in this study, they viewed these ads and articles over the course of five days to give a more realistic portrayal of how people consume media.
At the beginning of the study, Professor Knobloch-Westerwick collected data on the participants' magazine reading habits, their body mass index, body satisfaction levels and their tendency to compare their physical appearance to that of others.
On each of the five days, the women viewed 16 pages containing advertisements or articles taken from top women's beauty and fashion magazines.
The pages were not chosen for content, but because each contained a photo of a thin female model as the dominant graphic element on each page.
Participants were asked various questions about what they thought of the pages, as well as questions about their body satisfaction.
Crucial to the study were questions aimed at discovering how the women were comparing themselves to the models on the magazine pages.
For examples, were the participants simply evaluating how they looked compared to the models?
Those who were making such comparisons would say they strongly agreed with statements like 'This woman is thinner than me.'
The study also looked at whether participants compared themselves to the models with a view to self-improvement - these women would strongly agree with statements like 'I would like my body to look like this woman's body.'
After the five days, participants completed more questionnaires, including about their dieting behavior during the course of the study.
Results showed that women who simply evaluated themselves compared to the models showed lower body satisfaction by the end of the study.
But, they were also more likely to say they dieted during the last five days.
Professor Knobloch-Westerwick said: 'Social comparison for self-evaluation makes these women less happy with how they look and more likely to want to diet,'
'They look at the models in the magazines and think, 'this person is so much thinner than I am; I should skip a meal.'
'But women who used the self-improvement social comparison ('I would like my body to look like this woman's body') actually saw increases in body satisfaction.
'These women felt better about their own bodies because they imagined that they could look just like the models they saw in the magazines.'
Although it wasn't examined directly in the study, Professor Knobloch-Westerwick suspects that the text accompanying these images - lines such as 'Lose 10 pounds in 5 days' - would feed into those fantasies.
Another key finding was that women in the study tended to shift toward the self-improvement comparisons over the course of the study, which suggests that women begin to identify more with thin models after repeated exposures.
The professor said: 'They may begin to feel affiliated with the models, and start to think this person is someone like me, someone I can be friends with and emulate.'
According to the professor, this may also explain why the study found that viewing images of thin models may lead to higher body satisfaction, when so many other studies have found the opposite.
She said: 'If they just see an image of a thin model once and have to react immediately, they may indeed have poorer body satisfaction.'
'But if they look at images over the course of several days, readers may begin to feel more affiliated with the models, feel more like they could be like them.
That could lead them to switch from comparing themselves negatively to the models to using these models as thinspiration.'
