The Influence of Television and Film Viewing on Midlife Women's Body Image,Disordered Eating,and Food Choice

A recent trend in screen media is the casting of older women who have bodies that are the shapes and sizes of younger women. These aging beauties can be found in shows such as Cougar Town and Desperate Housewives. It was predicted that heavy viewers of these media would report stronger eating disorder symptomatology, greater body ideal discrepancies, and stricter food choices than light viewers. Participants were 166 midlife women (M: 44.57 years) who completed an online questionnaire that asked about body ideals, disordered eating, food choices, and exposure to aging beauty programming. Results demonstrate that media exposure was associated with stronger reports of disordered eating, greater discrepancies between actual body size and both women's ideal body size as well as perceptions of how others wanted them to look, and stricter food choices when around other people. Ideal self-discrepancies mediate the association between aging beauty media and disordered eating symptomatology. Our study builds on extant work related to media consumption, body concerns, and eating behaviors among a non–college-aged sample.