Research on response to advertising

In a 1992 study of female students at Stanford University, 70% of women reported feeling worse about themselves and their bodies after looking at magazines. (A British study also had a similar finding.) Roughly 50% of teen girls in the U.S. read teen or adult fashion magazines.

Lanis and Covell (1995) conducted a study on images of women in advertising and their effects on beliefs about sexual aggression. Both men and women were less supportive of feminism and the Women's Movement after being exposed to sexually explicit advertisements.

According to a study (Posavac, Posavac, & Posavac, 1998) on the effects of exposure to pictures of fashion models from popular women's magazines on young women's concerns with body weight, even passive exposure to such images resulted in negative body image and increased weight concern. Negative body image is often the result of a social comparison process, in which discrepancies are perceived between the cultural ideal of attractiveness, usually characterized in the media by a particular emphasis on thinness.