Project background: The Pearl Lagoon Basin is an area of Nicaragua which during our research was in the process of receiving mains electricity for the first time.  Those living in the remote villages of the Lagoon had no access to the internet at the time, nor magazines, and could only access visual media through television.  As such, this represented a remarkable research opportunity for assessing the impact of visual media on perceptions of beauty, particularly the extent to which residents of the region adopt a preference for slim female figures. This issue is of key importance as preference for slim female figures have been implicated as a factor in disordered eating and body dissatisfaction seen in many Westernised cultures.

Research questions:   The project has a series of studies designed to investigate different aspects of the link between television and beauty ideals.

How do levels of access to television affect preferences for female body weight? (Open access version) Boothroyd, Jucker et al. (2020).   Summary: This paper used three different approaches to provide convincing evidence that television is changing preferences. A cross-secitonal study of 300 individuals in 7 villages showed that watching TV predicted a preference for thinner and curvier women. This was also true when looking at within-individual change in preferences from year to year amongst a small community who were tested multiple times. Finally, an experimental study showed that viewing high or low weight models on a laptop actively changed villagers' preferences, as is also seen in the laboratory in the UK. (Open access version) Thornborrow et al. (2018)   Summary: When men created their 'ideal woman' using computergraphic software on a laptop, this in higher-media villages prefered female figures which were slimmer, and with larger breasts than in other villages. Follow up focus groups suggested that movement was more important than static appearance when men were judging attractiveness. Our participants suggested that they favoured body shapes which emphasised the movement of the lower body in walking or dancing.

How do nutritional stress and television access interact in body weight preferences? Jucker et al. (2017) Summary: Some non-Western populations may also prefer larger bodies due to a greater risk of insufficient food. Larger figures indicate a healthy person with good food resources. We therefore tested in villages which had high levels of nutritional stress and low media access, high nutritional stress and high TV access, and a vilalge with good nutrition and high TV access. We found that TV consumption remained important to predicting body size preferences across these communities, while measures of nutrition had very little impact.

How does television access affect body satisfaction in women and girls? Summary: A greater discrepancy between the perceived 'ideal' female shape, and ones own body shape, can lead to dissatisfaction and negative feelings about ones body.  This study is examining the extent to which villages with different levels of television access exhibit different levels of body dissatisfaction.  We assessed this in both adult women, and in children who were assessed annually over three years.  Body dissatsifaction starts to develop very early in childhood in the West. This research will help us to understand the role the media may play in these problems in more diverse populations. Results will be submitted for publication in 2020.

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