YOUNGER AND WISER?

A belief that today’s young adults are more mediasavvy and skeptical of advertising claims is just half true, psychology professor Anne Wilson says. Although 75 per cent of university students will say they know advertisements featuring beautiful people are unrealistic, they also believe 75 per cent of their peers don’t realize that. “It’s what we call pluralistic ignorance,” Wilson says, “a divide between your own beliefs and what you think others’ beliefs are.” The situation exists when people don’t discuss their views openly, she says. As a result, “people judge themselves through the eyes of others.” It becomes a problem if, for example, people feel pressure to be thinner when “they should just relax, eat a healthy diet and then not worry about it.” Wilson exercises at the Laurier athletic centre, as many students do. She overhears them talk about restricting calories during the day to compensate for alcohol they intend to consume that night, which to her is doubly risky: not only are they short of healthy nutrients, they’re drinking on empty stomachs. She also hears them discuss the “thigh gap” — the space between the legs of women whose thighs are so thin they don’t meet — and the “bikini bridge,” which appears if the abdomen of a slender woman lying on a beach is sufficiently concave that the bikini fabric stretches above it like a bridge between her protruding hip bones. The woman sees the bridge if she photographs herself with a phone held with an outstretched arm. As for what students think of the thigh gap and bikini bridge, Wilson says, “they’re ambivalent about whether they should go for it.”