There has been a shift in the depiction of women in advertising from objectifying representations of women as passive sex objects to agentic sexual representations where the women appear powerful and in control (Gill, 2007a(Gill, , 2008, and there is substantial evidence that these representations have a negative impact on women's body image. However, to our knowledge, this study is the first experimental research that aims to compare passively objectifying and more recent sexually agentic representations. British undergraduate women (N ¼ 122) participated in an experiment in which they were randomly assigned to view sexually passive, sexually agentic, or control print advertisements. Exposure to both types of representations of women, compared to viewing control images, was associated with increased weight dissatisfaction. The sexually agentic representations were singularly associated with increased state self-objectification. Media exposure research tends to focus on the models (e.g., their thinness) shown in advertising and pay little attention to the framing of the image. Our results highlight the powerful impact different framings can have on women's body image concerns as well as suggest that recent shifts in advertising may be particularly problematic because contemporary images increased both weight concern and selfobjectification. Therefore, these images may have a more powerful impact on psychological well-being and disordered eating behaviors than traditional images.
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Qualitative story completion (SC) research involves the novel qualitative application of a technique previously used in quantitative research and clinical assessment, in which participants write stories in response to a story "stem" designed by the researcher. The resulting stories are analysed to identify patterns of meaning using conventional qualitative analytic approaches such as thematic analysis. In place of the more typical self-report methods used in qualitative research, such as interviews or focus groups, the method provides a categorically different way to explore a topic, one which can offer new understandings to counseling psychology researchers. In particular, SC's capacity to illuminate social discourses makes it particularly useful for understanding the potential ways in which socially marginalized populations are understood in therapeutic spaces as well as for understanding how clients of all kinds may make sense of therapeutic interactions. This paper provides an introduction to qualitative SC, explaining the method and its origins, and offering practical guidance about how to use it. The method is illustrated with examples from the existing SC literature and a hypothetical study focussed on understandings of mental health difficulties in the workplace.
Dominant discourses represent body weight as a consequence of lifestyle, equating ‘fatness’ with ‘disease’ and ‘thinness’ with ‘health’. Consequently, fat subjects become framed as lazy and not willing to follow a ‘healthy’ lifestyle. In neoliberal societies, where ‘the autonomous, self‐regulating individual’ is highly valued, the previous construction of fat subjects appears particularly damning. In this study, we explore how women who self‐identify as ‘large’ negotiate their body weight, health and neoliberal credentials. To this end, interviews were conducted with 18 women, and the transcripts were analysed using discourse analysis. The constructions of health and well‐being articulated by the women were much broader and more complex than those reproduced in dominant neoliberalised discourses of health and body weight. Although most participants positioned themselves as healthy and health literate, prevailing constructions of ‘fat is unhealthy’ were also reproduced, and participants often struggled with the conflicting subject positions of the healthy and health‐conscious ‘good neoliberal citizen’ and the fat ‘failed’ individual risking ill‐health. Drawing on our analysis, we assert that, regardless of who is right in debates about the putative health implication of fat, the current reductionist approach to health and the global ‘war on obesity’ are problematic and potentially harmful. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Body size is closely linked to the gendered issue of beauty or aesthetics. While slenderness is a prominent aspect of a culturally constructed beauty ideal for women (e.g. Bordo, 1993;Chernin, 1983;Malson, 1998), a 'big albeit lean body', according to Monaghan (2007: 587) is an 'intentionally developed and valued' signifier of masculinity. Referring to Stearns (1997), Monaghan calls this the 'gendered inequalities in aestheticized body norms' (p. 587). Body size nowadays, however, is not only a matter of beauty but has become associated with irresponsibility in respect of a person's physical health and the nation's financial health, and as such both men and women seem to be (albeit still unequal) targets in the current 'war on obesity'. According to the World Health Organization ( 2007), the prevalence of 'overweight' and 'obesity' is increasing globally and in the UK (see also Rennie and Jebb, 2005), with health professionals and the government warning of an 'obesity epidemic' and its alleged related health risks, as well as financial implications for the nation (Department of Health, 2004a). Media coverage on the subject abounds, with regular news items on the health risks and causes of 'obesity' as well as reports on preventative measures taken in the UK and abroad. 'Large' people were warned, for example, about the risk of becoming blind (BBC, 2006a) and the nation was informed that Britain was the 'fattest country in Europe' (BBC, 2006b). Most of these reports have a negative tone and point towards the individual as the target of remedial action.The focus on the individual in this 'war' is evident in the general media as well as the medical and psychological literature which, within medicine, mostly concentrates on the health risks, causes and treatment of 'obesity' (e.g. Lawrence and Kopelman, 2004;Miles et al., 2001; World Health Organization, 2007) and, within psychology, the links between eating behaviour and mental health, psychological weight-loss interventions and attitudes towards 'large' individuals (e.g.
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