Effects of thin-ideal internalization, media exposure of thinness, and self-esteem on body dissatisfaction in a sample of young women in Lebanon

Abstract

Research has shown that the relation between media exposure of thinness and body-image disturbances leads to significant mental and health-related problems among young women across Western and non-Western countries. Research studies have also examined individual factors and other salient variables to identify potent risk factors that increase women's vulnerabilities to developing body dissatisfaction. Of the individual factors, thin-ideal internalization, self-esteem, and body mass index (BMI) were shown to be correlated with body dissatisfaction. Thin-ideal internalization, defined as the extent to which individuals are cognitively influenced by and endorse the socially transmitted definitions of attractiveness, has been shown to impact young women’s psychological and physical health through media exposure of thinness. Thin-ideal internalization is a potent risk factor that seems to also operate in conjunction with other risk factors, such as self-esteem and BMI. Thin-ideal internalization seems to have resulted because individuals internalize attitudes that are approved by peers and parents, and most importantly the media. In Lebanon, it seems no research has been conducted on the individual factors that predispose young women to differential responses following media exposure of thinness. Awareness of the risk factors could aid parents, teachers, and authorities in planning to decrease societal, peer, and cultural pressures of endorsing the thin-ideal perception among adolescent girls. An adequate initial step achieved in this study was to involve a sample of young women in Lebanon in an empirical examination of body dissatisfaction and predictors that might exacerbate it. The main purpose of this study was to determine whether thin-ideal internalization moderated the effect of media exposure of thinness on young women’s body dissatisfaction. The second purpose of the study was to examine whether participants with high internalization showed higher pre-exposure body dissatisfaction than participan