Miss America is often
thought of as a role model for young women. But the weight of
the reigning Miss America has been falling for decades,
leading researchers to suggest that winning contestants in the
most well known and widely viewed beauty pageant in the United
States now show signs of being undernourished.
Over the last decade, concern has been growing in the
medical community over the continued presence and promotion of
underweight women in the media -- particularly as it promotes
the development of poor body image and eating disorders among
adolescent girls.
In a letter published in the March 22nd issue of The
Journal of the American Medical Association, two researchers
from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore,
Maryland, report the findings from a review of the archives
from the Miss America Pageant, which covered the period 1922
to 1999.
The investigators note the presence of a clear decline in
body weight among the pageant winners over the course of the
nearly 80 years of competition. In effect, a 12% drop in
weight accompanied a less than 2% increase in height during
that time frame, rendering many of the beauty winners
nutritional losers.
The researchers note that the enduring popularity of the
pageant among TV viewers in the US means that the venue is
still a powerful example of a media outlet dispensing
society's 'ideal of beauty.' They point out that although
deemed politically incorrect by some, the pageant was watched
by over 10 million viewers in 1999 and ranked 11th in the
Nielsen Research ratings among prime-time programs. As such,
the research team suggests that the event retains the power to
perhaps negatively influence the aesthetic aspirations of
adolescent girls -- 50% to 70% of whom have been found in some
recent studies to be unhappy with their weight and body
image.
In an interview with Reuters Health, Allison Field, an
associate epidemiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital and
an instructor at Harvard Medical School in Boston,
Massachusetts, aid that while the data review highlighted one
aspect of the critical image problem girls face in the media,
it focused on a once-yearly event that pales in comparison to
the daily influence of magazines, newspapers, film and TV.
'The findings may be very striking, but probably stronger
images that would have a stronger impact would be on TV and in
movies than in beauty pageants because it's a one-time event
versus images girls are seeing everyday,' Field stated.
Field also cautioned that this type of study has
limitations in that none of the pageant winners were actually
interviewed to assess their views on how much influence media
imagery had on their own sense of body image while they were
in competition. 'It's a weak study design because you don't
ask people directly,' she noted, 'and it's a throwback to an
old method of measuring changes over time by solely looking at
data and tying it to images. It doesn't ask how directly
influenced the girls have been by images of weight.'
However, Field noted that the concern the study raises --
as well as the attention it focuses -- on the power the media
has to shape the self-image of an adolescent girl is valid and
important. She pointed out that what girls see in their
immediate environment and what they see in the media often
conflict. 'The American population in general is getting
heavier and heavier, so there's a very large discrepancy
between body weight -- which is growing larger and larger --
and what people are seeing in media images.'
This discrepancy has been documented in interview-based
studies Field herself has conducted, which she said have
clearly shown a reinforcing relationship between media
portrayals of ideal beauty -- whether through beauty pageants
or film and magazines -- and an adolescent girl's sense of
dissatisfaction with her body.
'In the research we've conducted, we followed girls over a
one-year time period and we found the more likely they wanted
to look like the figures they see in the media, the more
likely they were to put effort into purging over a one-year
time period -- using laxatives and vomiting,' Field added.
And, while not all girls fall victim to poor body image via
media influence, some will. 'There are many girls concerned
with their weight, and a minority will use an unhealthy way to
control it.'
SOURCE: The Journal of the American Medical Association
2000;283:1569.
