ABSTRACT
There is general agreement that pressures on women to be a particular shape and size are more pronounced than pressures on men. Studies that have investigated the portrayal of both genders have found that men and women are portrayed in markedly different ways in relation to body weight. Content analysis (where the frequency of portrayal of particular images is coded) has revealed that women are portrayed as abnormally slim in the media, whereas men tend to be portrayed as of standard weight. Linda Smolak (2004) notes that fashion models in the 2000s are thinner than 98 percent of US women, and Erin Strahan and colleagues (2006) argue that:
Images of thin women are ubiquitous in the media, and women’s magazines contain more messages about physical attractiveness than do men’s magazines.
