Normal size models make women feel better about themselves. Did they really need to do research to discover this?

When I used to put regular sized girls in Cosmo, I still used to get letters from readers bitching about the thin models in ads. “I don’t control the ads” I’d tell them. “Contact the advertisers, tell them how you feel and vote with your wallet”.

Besides Dove, no other advertiser listened and there has rarely been any deviation from the skinny model blueprint for advertising campaigns. The thinking has always been: thin sells more.

Now, Australian research has discovered that this is, in fact, bull. Bollocks. Rubbish.

Consumers’ decision whether or not to purchase a product is not affected by the size of the model. BUT. After looking at ads featuring different sized women instead of just skinny ones, women felt better about their own bodies. Gee. Knock me down with a feather.

Here, from the story in today’s paper:

In
the first empirical research into the question undertaken in Australia,
health psychologists have found young people’s response to an ad, and
their willingness to consider buying what it promotes, is exactly the
same whether the featured model is catwalk-slender or of a more average
body shape.

Phillippa Diedrichs created a series of mock ads,
using regular models – typically size eight – and so-called “plus size”
models, about size 12. She then presented three ads – for a hair-care
product, a party dress and underwear – to 400 young people. She found
there was no difference between their responses, with those who viewed
the larger models reporting themselves just as interested in buying the
goods as those who were presented with the skinnier women.

But on
another question the responses did differ: when asked further questions
designed to assess their own body satisfaction immediately after
viewing the draft ads, the women completing the survey, who were aged
18 to 25, felt better about themselves if they had been shown the
images of larger models, compared with those who saw the slim models.

“For
anything to change, research has to be convincing not just to
government and health researchers but also to people in advertising who
actually make the decisions,” says Diedrichs, whose study is part of
her PhD work at the University of Queensland’s Health Psychology
Research Unit. “Often people make the argument that thinness sells, and
that’s why they use [slim models].

“[This shows] we can change the images we see and still sell products but also make people feel better about themselves.”

The
study marks the first time in Australia that psychologists have sought
to measure objectively how people’s response to models translates into
buying behaviour, and follows last month’s proposal by Kate Ellis, the
federal Minister for Youth, of a code of conduct for magazines,
requiring them to show models who were not abnormally thin and to disclose the use of digitally altered images.

So. Which image makes you feel better? These ones or the ones in the post below……..?