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Music videos are disturbing adolescent girls by promoting ultra-thin role models as the epitome of beauty, psychologists warn today.
Watching pop videos featuring thin, scantily clad women for just 10 minutes was enough to drive down girls’ satisfaction with their body shape, according to a study which appears in the journal Body Image.
Researchers fear the damage inflicted on the self-image of girls as they prepare to leave schools and sixth form colleges is widespread, given the near ubiquity of music videos on television and on big screens in clothes shops, cafes and bars.
Viewing figures for music video satellite TV channels have swelled worldwide and a survey in 1998 found that 12 to 19-year-olds were the most frequent viewers, watching on average for 6.4 hours a week.
But Helga Dittmar, a university psychologist, and leader of the latest study, said adolescents were likely to spend far more time watching music videos than the survey suggested.
“Public places such as stores, bars and clubs increasingly display music videos on large TV screens, making them an inescapable, almost omnipresent form of media,” she said.
The researchers investigated the effect of watching music videos on body image by recruiting volunteers aged 16 to 19 from an all-girl college.
To keep the real goal of the study secret, the group of 87 girls were told they were taking part in a study looking at memory. The group was divided into three, with the first being shown three music videos. The second group of girls was asked to listen to the same songs, but without video. The third group was asked to memorise a list of 20 “neutral” words, such as fountain or acrobat.
Questionnaires designed to rate the girls’ self-esteem, mood and “body dissatisfaction” were used before and after each experiment to see how each changed with the tasks.
While the researchers found minor changes in mood and self-esteem among all the girls, the most dramatic changes were in the way girls viewed their bodies after watching the pop videos. On average, these girls were nearly 10 per cent less satisfied with their bodies.
“There’s a lot of evidence that body dissatisfaction is a strong predictor of eating disorders, so if something causes or heightens that feeling, it is a cause for concern,” said Dr Dittmar.
By Ian Sample
