Thin Ideal Body

This study aims to examine how undergraduate females are more likely to suffer body dissatisfaction with the potential to develop eating disorders as they consider an ‘ideal’ body shape to be smaller than their own. Due to media and social impacts the “thin-ideal” has contributed to an overall dissatisfaction with the female body, studies have shown that even women who are considered healthy or underweight, perceive themselves as being overweight. A total of 119 female undergraduate students ranging in ages (MA=22) will complete both a Psychosocial Risk Factors Questionnaire (PRFQ) and the Photographic Figure Rating Scale (PFRS). It is expected that the majority of participants will express moderate to strong negative feelings about their body. It is also predicted that females with negative body image or a desire to be thin have an increase chance of suffer from an eating disorder.

In the western world the ‘ideal’ body shape is strongly becoming more associated with being thin, as portrayed in the media. This thin ideal is increasingly different with what the average female body (MacNeill & Best, 2015) is accepted as according to a healthy BMI and eating habits. This view has thought to have been typical amongst western …show more content…
Participants will firstly be put in a group depending on their BMI, this will not affect what tests they do, only how the data is collected. Individuals will then be required to do the PRFQ. Results will kept in the three separate BMI groups. Then compared against the other groups to gain an overall understanding of body dissatisfaction and pressures in each BMI group. Individuals will then complete the PFRS, in their allocated BMI groups. Participants will be asked to number the pictures on a scale according to what they consider to be underweight (1), ‘ideal’ (5), and obese (10). These results will again be complied in individual groups then compared as a