Watching TV ‘makes you prefer thinner women’

Science Correspondent

WATCHING television may make people prefer thinner women, a study has found.

Those who never watch TV find women who are slightly overweight attractive, the research shows.

But men and women who view mainstream programmes tend to believe only thinner women have good bodies.

The claim comes from a team who travelled to remote villages in Nicaragua, central America, where some communities do not have access to electricity or television. Residents in neighbouring villages had a similar education and income, but those who had television sets rated overweight women more harshly when shown pictures.

Professor Lynda Boothroyd, first author of the study from Durham University, said: ‘These people did not generally have smartphones or access to the internet, so we could see that it was television which was actively changing their view on what type of women were attractive.

‘This is probably exactly what happened in the UK decades ago, so that many people began to believe a thin woman is an ideal woman.’

Those living in a village without television rated women with an average body mass index (BMI) of 27 as having a good

body, even though a BMI of over 25 is in the overweight range in the UK. But people living in the villages where most TV was watched found a much lower average BMI of 22 attractive.

Experts believe TV teaches people that thin women are most attractive by showing them repeated images so they get used to this body type and see it as the norm.

Professor Boothroyd, whose study is published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, said: ‘TV and advertising bosses have a moral responsibility to use actors, presenters and models of all shapes and sizes and avoid stigmatising larger bodies.’