ABSTRACT
Studies have shown that women experience more societal pressures to be thin than their male counterparts. For example, Anderson and DiDomenico (1992), of the University of Iowa, explored the number of articles on weight loss and shape in 10 popular magazines targeted toward young men and women. What they found was astounding. Women's magazines contained over 10 times more advertisements and articles on weight loss than did men's. As women were being encouraged to slim down, men were receiving messages about the importance of building upper body bulk while slimming the abdominal area. Interestingly, overweight women do not appear to be any more likely to develop eating disorders than their underweight or normal-weight peers, yet women's magazines exhort women, in general, to lose weight. Men, however-like Joshua-are more likely to develop eating disorders due to “real” overweight concerns, yet men's magazines do not focus on weight as much as do women's. It appears that real weight issues predispose many men to eating disorders, whereas body-image distortion and dissatisfaction, regardless of weight pre-onset, predisposes women to the development of eating disorders.
