Music videos are a particularly influential, new form of mass media for adolescents, which include the depiction of scantily clad female models whose bodies epitomise the ultra-thin sociocultural ideal for young women. The present study is the first exposure experiment that examines the impact of thin models in music videos on the body dissatisfaction of 16–19-year-old adolescent girls (n = 87). First, participants completed measures of positive and negative affect, body image, and self-esteem. Under the guise of a memory experiment, they then either watched three music videos, listened to three songs (from the videos), or learned a list of words. Affect and body image were assessed afterwards. In contrast to the music listening and word-learning conditions, girls who watched the music videos reported significantly elevated scores on an adaptation of the Body Image States Scale after exposure, indicating increased body dissatisfaction. Self-esteem was not found to be a significant moderator of this relationship. Implications and future research are discussed.
Music videos are a relatively recent, but increasingly influential form of mass media for adolescents (Roberts, Henrikson, & Foehr, 2004). There has been concern about documented negative effects with respect to violence and aggression (Anderson et al., 2003 and Rustad et al., 2003), sexuality and gender roles (Brown, Steele, & Walsh, 2002; Ward, Hansbrough, & Walker, 2005), and alcohol use (Van den Bulck, Beullens, & Mulder, 2006), but much less attention has been paid to the fact that music videos also depict sociocultural ideals of the body perfect. Music videos often feature scantily clad models whose dance movements further highlight the size, shape, and proportions of their bodies. Among these idealized models are young women who epitomize the female ideal of ultra-thinness, and who can function as aspirational role models for adolescent girls (Dittmar, 2007 and Tiggemann, 2005). Given the growing evidence that unrealistic body ideals in other forms of mass media can increase body dissatisfaction (see review by Levine & Harrison, 2004), it seems likely that thin models in music videos have detrimental effects on adolescent girls’ body image. Yet, their role in causing body dissatisfaction among adolescent girls still needs to be examined.
A key finding of the present study is that adolescent girls exposed to thin models in music videos show a significantly larger increase in body dissatisfaction from pre- to post-exposure in comparison to girls who had listened to the songs without visual input and girls in the baseline, word recall, intervention. This finding is consistent with the only other experimental study of the effects of music video exposure by Tiggemann and Slater (2004), who showed that exposure to clips of the thin ideal in music videos led to increased body dissatisfaction amongst college-aged women students. However, our research offers two extensions. First, it demonstrates such an effect in adolescent girls, which had not been done before, but which appeared vital, given that adolescents are the heaviest viewers of music videos. Second, the present findings provide evidence that a 10-min exposure to music videos leads to a significantly greater increase in adolescent girls’ body dissatisfaction due to the visual depiction of ultra-thin idealized models, when compared to the effect of listening to the lyrics and songs on these videos.
