Mincing Media: A Comparative Analysis of Media Influence on the Body Image of Young Males and Females

With media exposure rising among today’s youth, it is imperative to investigate its harmful effects on various aspects of their life. It may have an effect on the way the youth see themselves and their mental perception of what they look like can be distorted by the media. Body image is one of the issues which has been studied, but not enough research has been done on comparing its influence on males and females considering that a healthy body image is instrumental in all aspects of life. Thus, this study was done with an aim to explore the effects of mass media on the body image of youngsters in India with the objective of finding out the differences in the patterns of media influence among young men and women. A mixed method research design was employed for the same. The Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire-3 (SATAQ-3) (Thompson, 2004) was administered to a total sample of 110 young Indians in the age bracket of 17-25 years with both males (n=52) and females (n=58) for which purposive sampling was used. Further, two open-ended questions were also asked to gather in-depth information on the same. A quantitative and qualitative analysis was done after which the results revealed that there were no differences between males and females in terms of the media influence on body image. The study has implications for the youth who actively consume mass media on a daily basis and for various others involved in the business-like actors, filmmakers, marketing agencies, editorial teams, etc.