The Media and Body Image

Blaming the media for reproducing and extolling unrealistic female bodies has almost become a popular truism. Even medical opinion notes that the media can influence young women to starve themselves and therefore act as a possible causal factor of disordered eating. Yet surprisingly, little work has addressed either the nature of media representations of the body, or the ways in which audiences interpret and use such images in our contemporary cultural context. "The Media and Body Image" addresses this lack and: draws together literature from sociology, gender studies and psychology; brings together new empirical work on both media representations and audience responses; and offers a broad discussion of this topic in the context of socio-cultural change, gender politics, and self-identity.

ISBN 0761942483   Pages 256 ISBN13 9780761942481 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher SAGE Publications Ltd   Weight (grammes) 399 Imprint SAGE Publications Ltd   Published in London Format Paperback   Height (mm) 234 Publication date 18 Dec 2004   Width (mm) 156 Library of Congress 2005295979   Spine width (mm) 15 DEWEY 302.23   Academic level Tertiary education, Professional / Scholarly DEWEY edition DC22

1		Could looks kill?		1
2		Dying to be thin		13
3		Body matters		36
4		Print : selling sex and slenderness		65
5		Starring roles : screening images		100
6		From representation to effects		138
7		Media exposure and body image ideals		154
8		Media causation and body image perceptions		174
9		The media and clinical problems with body image		192
10		Conclusion : body messages and body meanings		204

"Wykes and Gunter take a novel approach to familiar subjects - body image, eating disorders, Western ideals of beauty, media representations of femininity - by offering historical contextualization of the discourses surrounding each issue and articulating how these discourses relate. The upshot is a useful discussion that interrogates, rather than presumes, the effects of mass media on audiences and consumers... Highly recommended." -- P.A. Fulfs CHOICE 20050701

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