ABSTRACT
Until recently, there has been little research on the mediated messages that may help fuel Americans’ obsession with losing weight. This chapter is an interdisciplinary look at the impact of the mass media on body image. Bringing together work from the fields of psychology, psychiatry, and sociology, this review explores seminal body-image research and then looks critically at communication research that tries to link consumption of media messages with body-image deterioration. The chapter concludes with the suggestion that researchers study mass-media messages and their effects on body image with a new array of methodological tools, including ethnography and diaries.
