A body ideal refers to a physical ideal that a person seeks to imitate [1]. In the United States, many women and men strive to attain specific body ideals unique to their gender within the confines of Western culture’s body ideal standards. The thin body ideal for women has been established for decades, beginning with the idolization of models and flapper girls in the early 1900s [1]. Aside from the short digression from the thin ideal during the 1950’s under Marilyn Monroe’s influence, the weight of females in the mass media has been steadily decreasing since the 1900’s, especially since the 1950’s [2,3]. This is exemplified by the increasing thinness of Playboy centerfolds and Miss America Pageant winners from the 1950’s to the present [4,5]. Furthermore, Sypeck, Gray, and Ahrens, discovered that fashion models, both in television and print during the 1980’s and 1990’s are less curvaceous and more “angular” [6,7]. Moreover as Western women’s body ideals became thinner over time, the average American women under twenty had a weight gain of 5-6 lbs. on average; thereby creating an ever-increasing gap between body ideals and women’s realistic body sizes still observed today.
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