TLC's Big Sexy

sexy: sexually attractive or exciting

A show that uplifts big, sexy women? A show that declares that women can be big, beautiful, and healthy? Is it too good to be true?

It's real! Maybe. I saw the premiere of Big Sexy tonight, and I loved it. The show has five incredible women who work in fashion in Manhattan. The first episode showcases a plus size fashion show that they managed to arrange within two weeks, and it was fabulous.

The only problem I had (which could change if I watch the episode a second time with a more critical eye) was that it opened with one of the women squeezing herself into a body shaper. The rest of the episode more than made up for it, but that part still sticks with me. It sent me the message "Hey, these women are great, but look how they try to hide the bodies they purport to love!"

If you look up the show, I'd advise checking TLC's site. Already I found several positive articles and blogs about the show, but some of the comments are disheartening at best. I encourage you to watch this show. I know I'm going to keep my eye on it.

Kirstie Alley Calls Out Letterman For Telling Fat Jokes About Her

Bold: Showing an ability to take risks; confident and courageous.

This article is about a month old, I think it deserves highlighting: Kirstie Alley Calls Out Letterman For Telling Fat Jokes About Her. The gist of the short article is that Kirstie Alley boldly went on Letterman and humorously criticized him for writing jokes about her. It always irks me when talk show hosts mock a person one night and pander to them the next--when the celebrity is on the show.

How incredibly brazen! I can't imagine doing something like that on national television, even if it were pre-approved (as some commenters suggest). I would love to see more celebrities do something like this: use a talk show host's popularity to highlight how unreasonable the host was before. Kirstie managed to point out that David Letterman was unreasonable and rude, and even he commented that they "probably" wouldn't have made fun of her if she weren't overweight.

Kudos, Kirstie! That was brilliant, and I appreciated it.

Reference List

Over the next several days, I'm going to post sections of my thesis. I had a request to see it, and I figured I might as well post it here. It's about negative body images in the media and the programs that work to combat the negativity. Because the paper was long, each post will be one major section of the paper. This is the final post of my thesis.

About-Face. 2010. “Don’t fall for the media circus!” Retrieved April 20, 2010 (http://www.about-face.org).

Ahern, Amy L., Kate M. Bennett, and Marion M. Hetherington. 2008. “Internalization of the Ultra-Thin Ideal: Positive Implicit Associations with Underweight Fashion Models are Associated with Drive for Thinness in Young Women.” Eating Disorders 16 (4): 294-307.

Anderson, Daniel R., Aletha C. Huston, Kelly L. Schmitt, Deborah L. Linebarger, and John C. Wright. 2001. “IX. Self-Image: Role Model Preference And Body Image.” Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 66 (1): 108-118.

Clark, Levina and Marika Tiggemann. 2007. “Sociocultural Influences and Body Image in 9- to 12-Year-Old Girls: The Role of Appearance Schemas.” Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology 36 (1): 76-86.

Clay, Daniel, Vivian L. Vignoles, and Helga Dittmar. 2005. “Body Image and Self-Esteem Among Adolescent Girls: Testing the Influence of Sociocultural Factors.” Journal of Research on Adolescence 15 (4): 451-477.

Cusumano, Dale L. and J. Kevin Thompson. 2001. “Media Influence and Body Image in 8-11-Year-Old Boys and Girls: A Preliminary Report on the Multidimensional Media Influence Scale.” International Journal of Eating Disorders 29 (1): 37-44.

Dohnt, Hayley and Marika Tiggemann. 2006. “The Contribution of Peer and Media Influences to the Development of Body Satisfaction and Self-Esteem in Young Girls: A Prospective Study.” Developmental Psychology 42 (5): 929-936.

Dohnt, Hayley K. and Marika Tiggemann. 2008. “Promoting positive body image in young girls: an evaluation of ‘Shapesville.’” European Eating Disorders Review 16 (3): 222-233.

Dove. 2010. “Campaign for Real Beauty.” Retrieved April 15, 2010 (http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com).

Fruit of the Loom. 2006. “Fruit Guy Fans.” Retrieved April 23, 2010 (http://www.fruitguyfans.com).

Herbozo, Sylvia, Stacey Tantleff-Dunn, Jessica Gokee-Larose, and J. Kevin Thompson. 2004. “Beauty and Thinness Messages in Children's Media: A Content Analysis.” Eating Disorders 12 (1): 21-34.

Kaiser Family Foundation. 2006. “Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds.” Menlo Park, CA: Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Retrieved April 14, 2010 (http://www.kff.org/entmedia/upload/8010.pdf).

Lam, T.H, Stephanie Lee, Samantha Fund, S.Y. Ho, Peter W. H. Lee, and Sunita Stewart. 2009. “Sociocultural influences on body dissatisfaction and dieting in Hong Kong girls.” European Eating Disorders Review 17 (2): 152-160.

Maltby, John, David Giles, Louise Barber, and Lynn E. McCutcheon. 2005. “Intense-personal celebrity worship and body image: Evidence of a link among female adolescents.” British Journal of Health Psychology 10 (1): 17-32.

McCabe, Marita P., Lina A. Ricciardelli, Jacqueline Stanford, Kate Holt, Salley Keegan, Louise Miller. 2007. “Where is all the pressure coming from? Messages from mothers and teachers about preschool children's appearance, diet and exercise.” European Eating Disorders Review 15 (3): 221-230.

McNicholas, Fiona, Alma Lydon, Ruth Lennon, and Barbara Dooley. 2009. “Eating concerns and media influences in an Irish adolescent context.” European Eating Disorders Review 17 (3): 208-213.

National Eating Disorders Association. 2010. “National Eating Disorders Association.” Retrieved April 20, 2010 (http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/programs-events/media-watchdog.php).

Smeesters, Dirk and Naomi Mandel. 2006. “Positive and Negative Media Image Effects on the Self.” Journal of Consumer Research 32 (4): 576-582.

Thompson, J. Kevin and Leslie Heinberg. 1999. “The Media’s Influence on Body Image Disturbance and Eating Disorders: We’ve Reviled Them, Now Can We Rehabilitate Them?” Journal of Social Issues 55 (2): 339-353.

Tiggermann, Marika and Amanda S. Pickering. 1996. “Role of television in adolescent women's body dissatisfaction and drive for thinness.” International Journal of Eating Disorders 20 (2): 199-203.

Redefining Beauty: Conclusion

Over the next several days, I'm going to post sections of my thesis. I had a request to see it, and I figured I might as well post it here. It's about negative body images in the media and the programs that work to combat the negativity. Because the paper was long, each post will be one major section of the paper. I apologize for the delay; I've been out of town but have returned finally. This is the final section of my thesis. References will be posted tomorrow, and normal posting will resume later this week.

Continued Education
Therefore, it is important not only to educate girls at a young age, but also to continue the education at length. Programs such as Shapesville have shown that it is possible to raise self-esteem and to convey positive body messages. As Dohnt and Tiggemann (2008) agree, “programs that target media internalisation [sic] at a young age are warranted, and the results of the present study indicate that Shapesville successfully achieve this aim” (231). However, one brief session is unlikely to last for a lifetime of positive body images. Just as a person cannot take one foreign language course and expect to become fluent, a girl cannot take one self-esteem enrichment course and expect to accept her body and change her perspective.

Long-Term Goals
As aforementioned, if a female adolescent perceives thinness to be beauty and to lead to happiness, she will go to great lengths. This is unfortunate because some girls will develop eating disorders to achieve this goal. Female adolescents who are unable to attain the unrealistic definition of beauty will be likely to yield to low self-esteem. Conversely, if the definition of beauty is redefined so as to include a broader base of women—hopefully women of all types of beauty—female adolescents will be able to accept themselves, to have higher self-esteem, and to have higher body satisfaction to avoid drastic measures, such as eating disorders or body alterations. If programs like the Real Campaign for Beauty and educational tools like Shapesville become more prominent, the definition of beauty within our culture has the ability to change. Although the change would not likely happen over night or even within a few years, the next generation of female adolescents has the potential to live in a world without bias toward thinness, to consider themselves as beautiful as anyone else, and to achieve the high self-esteem that they need to be happy, healthy, and confident.

Positive Programs to Enhance Self-Esteem: Part 3

Over the next several days, I'm going to post sections of my thesis. I had a request to see it, and I figured I might as well post it here. It's about negative body images in the media and the programs that work to combat the negativity. Because the paper was long, each post will be one major section of the paper. I apologize for the delay; I've been out of town and still am.

About-Face
About-Face, an organization whose mission is “to imbue girls and women with the power to free themselves from the burden of body-image problems so they will be capable of fulfilling their varied and wondrous potentials,” goes a step beyond the NEDA’s Media Watchdog program: this organization provides a “gallery of offenders” and “gallery of winners” and encourage viewers to contact the people, programs, or companies in question (About-Face 2010). On the website’s blog, the organization writes articles regarding the latest offender or winner. Although the group may seem radical in its approach to changing the media, they do also advocate media literacy and provide a wealth of resources to enhance viewers’ media literacy, ranging in topic from articles about body image and obesity to cosmetic surgery and eating disorders (About-Face 2010).

Shapesville
Shapesville, written by Andy Mills and Becky Osborn and illustrated by Erica Neitz, “is a children’s picture book that has simple, rhyming sentences and bright illustrations to engage the children in the story and make the program developmentally appropriate” and that “celebrates positive body image by encouraging self-acceptance and diversity” (Dohnt and Tiggemann 2008:224). The short book teaches girls how to care for their bodies and minds. Readers learn about the five food groups to build strong bodies and about special talents to build self-esteem. One study in Australian private schools showed that girls who were read Shapesville could list the food groups and were more willing and able to list special skills or talents they possessed (Dohnt and Tiggemann 2008). This newfound ability to recognize what set them apart from the crowd is important for their self-esteem.

Unfortunately, due at least in part to the aforementioned proponents of negative body image, at the six week follow-up, most girls were no longer internalizing the positive body image lessons for appearance satisfaction as they had reported after the end of the reading session, but they did retain knowledge of accepting others regardless of appearance and of remembering five food groups, which previously none of the girls could recite entirely (Dohnt and Tiggemann 2008). While each could recall at minimum a vague understanding of what she learned, most regressed to the same low self-esteem she had shown before. Moreover at followup, the girls reported that they no longer wanted to look like television or pop stars as they had before reading Shapesville, an important factor in determining a female adolescent’s willingness to internalize media image and to succumb to low self-esteem or poor body image (Dohnt and Tiggemann 2008:229; Maltby, Giles, and Barber 2005:28). Assuming that a girls’ environment plays an important part in maintaining her negative body image, it would follow that replacing her into such an environment without continual education and support would minimize the effects of a one-time program.

Positive Programs to Enhance Self-Esteem: Part 2

Over the next several days, I'm going to post sections of my thesis. I had a request to see it, and I figured I might as well post it here. It's about negative body images in the media and the programs that work to combat the negativity. Because the paper was long, each post will be one major section of the paper.

Dove
Dove is conducting the most pervasive program to promote positive body images. In September 2004, Dove launched the Campaign for Real Beauty (Dove 2010). Dove discontinued using ultrathin models to opt for more realistic, healthy-looking women for their commercials. Although it has been nearly ten years from inception, the Campaign for Real Beauty continues to display healthy women in commercials featuring products such as deodorant and body lotion. The Dove website explains that every purchase of a Dove product goes toward the Dove Self-Esteem Fund that supports programs for the Campaign for Real Beauty. Using the Dove Self-Esteem Fund, Dove is able to produce television advertisements that educate the public on how marketing companies use air-brushing and computer-enhancing programs to create unrealistic ideals that bombard female adolescents (Dove 2010).

After the introduction of the Campaign for Real Beauty, Dove delved into a more active role in helping young women to realize their own beauty. Dove achieves this is by partnering with the Girl Scouts of the USA to spread the positive body message. The program targets girls between the ages of eight and seventeen and consists of self-esteem boosting workshops, culminating in a ceremony in which the girls promise to love themselves and their bodies (Dove 2010). Dove’s program, Uniquely ME!, shows girls the difference between reality and the Hollywood perception of beauty. The girls are able to see how computers can alter images so that the images no longer contain real women; workshop participants have the opportunity to see unaltered photographs of models beside the computer-enhanced images and to discern the differences between the two (Dove 2010). On the website, parents can download free self-esteem tools to continue building the self-esteem of their daughters.

National Eating Disorders Association
Girl Scouts of the USA also offered to collaborate with another group: the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA). The Girl Scouts of the USA authored a piece of federal legislation, HR 4925, the Healthy Media for Youth Act, and requested that the NEDA become a partner in this initiative:

NEDA partnered with Girl Scouts of the USA, the bill author, on the initiative, which states that the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, shall review, synthesize, and conduct or support research on the role and impact that media has on diet, nutrition, exercise, body image, and eating. If passed, the bill will also authorize research on how food marketing and obesity campaigns affect girls' and boys' image, nutrition, and exercise, especially among eating-disordered youth populations. (National Eating Disorders Association 2010)

On March 24, 2010, HR 4925 has been referred to the Subcommittee on House Energy and Commerce, where it has remained for the last month. Recently passed legislation, HR 3590², should assist in furthering the efforts of the Girl Scouts and the NEDA by providing more information to the public on the nutritional contents of their meals.

Furthermore, the NEDA works hard to combat negative body images in the media in hopes of preventing young women from turning to eating disorders like anorexia or bulimia nervosa. Uniquely, the NEDA asks the public to take an active role in contacting the media to let stations, networks, and corporations know that no longer with the American public accept the use of unhealthy models in commercials and shows. The NEDA’s Media Watchdog Program, created in 1997, provides helpful links for readers, such as “What to Look for in the Media,” to assist United States citizens in making the media aware of their concerns in an educated, informed manner (National Eating Disorders Association 2010). The website boasts that “over half of the protested advertisements have been discontinued” (National Eating Disorders Association 2010).

In addition, the NEDA website contains an impressive array of educational tools for children, parents, teachers, and concerned viewers who want to make a difference in what the media portrays to young girls. The resources pages include information to target demographic groups by gender, age, and profession so that viewers may streamline their experience on the website and find information quickly and easily. Aside from general educational information, viewers may watch videos regarding eating disorders or attend webinars, interactive seminars provided through a combination of webcam usage and chat rooms (National Eating Disorders Association 2010). The NEDA is committed to providing accurate information so that people of all ages and occupations can become media literate (to understand the unrealistic images projected through the media) and improve the body image concepts presented in the media by voicing concern.

²HR 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, includes a section entitled “Nutrition Labeling of Standard Menu Items at Chain Restaurants” that will force restaurants with over twenty chain establishments to provide nutritional information to patrons in an easy to understand and readily accessible format.

Positive Programs to Enhance Self-Esteem: Part 1

Over the next several days, I'm going to post sections of my thesis. I had a request to see it, and I figured I might as well post it here. It's about negative body images in the media and the programs that work to combat the negativity. Because the paper was long, each post will be one major section of the paper.

Social marketing (the idea to make the marketing industry more socially relevant) does not necessarily have to use the media to challenge or to change the messages; support groups, families, and peers can and should be used, as well (Thompson and Heinberg 1999:349; NEDA). Thompson and Heinberg enumerate four key issues that these groups could target to work toward redefining beauty:

1. Preventing the behaviors that result from internalization of media images
   
2. Promoting internalization of positive, healthy norms that are present and promoted by the media
   
3. Informing consumers of strategies used to perpetuate unreasonable norms (e.g., airbrushed photos, computer-modified images, etc.)
   
4. Providing information about the negative correlates of extreme weight loss behaviors (1999:349)

Several groups, some of which do work directly through the media and some of which take a more grass-roots approach by working with families, have sought to do this and continue to make great strides in correcting the damage done to female adolescents’ self-esteem as described below.

Fruit of the Loom
In 2009, Fruit of the Loom produced a commercial portraying healthy, moderately-sized women. The women are wearing Fruit of the Loom Fit-for-Me undergarments, a line designed for “full-figured women” (Fruit of the Loom 2006). A voiceover sings a lyric created specifically for the commercial: “There’s a smile that you show me, pulls me closer to you / As the moonlight reflects in your eyes / And the touch of your hand, dear, enchants me, romances me / Let’s leave the rest of the world far behind” (Fruit of the Loom 2006). The image is heartwarming until the audience learns that the voiceover is one of a group of men wearing giant fruit costumes known as The Fruit Guys. At this point, the commercial becomes a farce; all other commercials featuring the giant fruit are comical, and that perception bleeds into what could have resulted in positive body messages. Furthermore, the addition of the “Fit for Me” sign at the end of the commercial denotes that the women were used because they are full-sized women and not simply because they are beautiful models. Still, the commercial is a positive change from other Fruit of the Loom commercials which continue to show only underweight, scantily-clad models.

Negative Effects on Adolescent Self-Esteem: Part 3

Over the next several days, I'm going to post sections of my thesis. I had a request to see it, and I figured I might as well post it here. It's about negative body images in the media and the programs that work to combat the negativity. Because the paper was long, each post will be one major section of the paper. Today's post is actually one of the more upsetting parts of the paper, in my opinion.

Impact of Children’s Movies and Literature
Perhaps more disturbing than images in commercials or programs for young adults which may inadvertently affect pre-adolescents are messages engrained in movies and literature made specifically for children. Many of the “classics” contain negative and detrimental body messages. A study by Herbozo, Tantleff-Dunn, Gokee-Larose, and Thompson undertook a content analysis of the top twenty-five children’s films and twenty children’s books. The researchers made an interesting discovery:

In many of the classic videos (60%), a character’s love for another character depends on his or her physical appearance. For example, the prince in Cinderella invites the “beautiful” maiden to a ball so he could select his bride. Also, in Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Beauty and the Beast, a female’s appearance attracts a male who is unaware of her other qualities until after falling in love with her. This suggests that his initial attraction is based on her appearance. (Herbozo, Tantleff-Dunn, Gokee-Larose, and Thompson 2004:27)

In fact, in both Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, the leading female characters are in a deep sleep (after having been cursed by witches) when the male hero rescues them with a kiss. The men are presumed to have fallen in love with the women for their beauty before they even hear the women’s voices.

Even Beauty and the Beast, a story about a bibliophile who falls in love with her beastly captor after making a deal to keep her at the Beast’s castle to bargain for the life of her father, has the stereotypical happy ending of the Beast, a hideous creature, returning to this handsome state as a wealthy prince. The story has a positive message when Belle looks beyond the Beast’s appearance to see the gentleness within him, but the message is dashed when we realize that the Beast was a handsome fellow who had been cursed by an ugly hag. We pity the man who loses his attractiveness yet condemn the witch who cast a spell to make him as unattractive on the outside as he was on the inside.

In general, beauty was equated with happiness, love, kindness, and other positive characteristics; conversely, ugliness alluded to trickery, malcontent, and negative characteristics. Symbolically, beauty evoked thoughts of positivity while ugliness (anything that did not fit within the narrow definition of beauty as thinness) lead to negativity. Furthermore, while female physical attractiveness and having a slender body creates an image with positive characteristics, obesity is associated with “negative traits in 64% of the children’s videos and 20% of the books” and “obese characters are commonly depicted as evil, unattractive, unfriendly and cruel” (Herbozo, Tantleff-Dunn, Gokee-Larose, and Thompson 2004:27). Another feature of the study revealed that none of the films and only one of the books depicted exercise as a form of losing weight (28-29). Interestingly, it would seem that the media suggest that people are naturally thin as a manifestation of their good qualities, and obese people are cursed to remain overweight due to inherent, bad qualities.

Three movies that did not have as much negative stereotyping were E.T., Indian in the Cupboard, and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, three of only six non-animated film from the top twenty-five list (Herbozo, Tantleff-Dunn, Gokee-Larose, and Thompson 2004). Unlike most of the other films, which revolved around beautiful men and women (or female and male animals) falling in love, E.T., Indian in the Cupboard, and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory focus their attention on children as opposed to adult relationships. This could suggest that films created specifically for children about children are less likely than the others to perpetuate the negative stereotypes. This would imply that although the symbol of beauty affects young children, it is not meant to affect them necessarily. Children are not expected to conform to the ideals of beauty, yet they must understand the ideals so that they can portray them when they are older.

Negative Effects on Adolescent Self-Esteem: Part 1

Over the next several days, I'm going to post sections of my thesis. I had a request to see it, and I figured I might as well post it here. It's about negative body images in the media and the programs that work to combat the negativity. Because the paper was long, each post will be one major section of the paper.

Impact of the Media
While one must recognize that correlation does not necessarily or immediately prove causation, multiple studies have shown a link between media viewing and distorted body image and/or body dissatisfaction for young, female adolescents both within the United States and throughout much of the developed world (Cusumano and Thompson 2001; Thompson and Heinberg 1999; Tiggemann and Pickering 1999; Maltby, Giles, Barber, and McCutcheon 2005; McNicholas, Fiona, Alma Lydon, Ruth Lennon, and Barbara Dooley 2009). Most models and actresses on television are not representative of the population in terms of body size or weight; many are underweight (Anderson, Huston, Schmitt, Linebarger, and Wright 2001). Girls are bombarded with these distorted images and tend to take them as reality. Even if a child can distinguish that television shows are fiction, she may not realize that the body images projected are fiction, as well. In fact, 35% of adolescent girls named a person from entertainment media, sports, or public life as a role model in one study (Anderson, Daniel R., Aletha C. Huston, Kelly L. Schmitt, Deborah L. Linebarger, and John C. Wright 2001:115). It is apparent that negative body image is an epidemic. Therefore, helping women rebuild their battered body image is an essential part of strengthening society.

Moreover, one experiment showed that certain body types affect young women differently (Smeesters and Mandel 2006). Women who viewed extreme body types, either thin or obese, were more likely to suffer from negative feelings of self-esteem. However, women who viewed body types that were moderately thin or moderately overweight reported higher self-esteem because of upward comparison (Smeesters and Mandel 2006). Additionally, “exposure to moderately thin (but not extremely thin) model has a positive impact on one’s self-esteem” (Smeesters and Mandel 2006:581). One might make the suggestion from this evidence that the media should consider using moderately-sized women in their programming to avoid feelings of self dissatisfaction among young female viewers. This measure would help to extend the definition of beauty to at least healthy but thin women.

Impact of Parents and Peers
Of course, media are not the only proponents of negative body image in female adolescents (Dohnt and Tiggemann 2006; Clay, Vignoles, and Dittmar 2005). While the media may be the largest or most visible perpetuator of negative body images, a female adolescent’s family, friends, and peers often help to reinforce the negativity in her life (Lam, Lee, Fund, Ho, Lee, and Stewart 2009; Clark and Tiggemann 2007). McCabe, Ricciardelli, Stanford, Holt, Keegan, Miller studied the roles of mothers and teachers on children’s body appearance satisfaction (2007). While teacher’s reported minimizing discussion with students regarding the students’ appearance, mothers admitted to being more critical of their daughters than their sons and were vocal about the criticisms, both to the interview and to their children:

In fact, mothers promoted exercise as a means of weight control for girls. Even if this was not overtly stated to the girls, the consistent view of the mothers was that their daughters needed to exercise so that they would become fit, and not become overweight. Even at this young age, mothers are already communicating different messages to boys and girls. (McCabe, Ricciardelli, Stanford, Holt, Keegan, Miller 2007:228)

Whenever the mothers commented on exercise for the boys, they intended the boys to exercise to gain muscle rather than lose or maintain weight (McCabe, Ricciardelli, Stanford, Holt, Keegan, Miller 2007:228). One must note that the mothers of these girls were likely indoctrinated with the idea of thinness is beauty and are socializing their children in the same way that they would teach their children about any other aspect of their culture.

Redefining Beauty

Over the next several days, I'm going to post sections of my thesis. I had a request to see it, and I figured I might as well post it here. It's about negative body images in the media and the programs that work to combat the negativity. Because the paper was long, each post will be one major section of the paper. Today I'll begin with my abstract.

The current definition of beauty is far too narrow. American society dictates that a woman is only beautiful if she is thin, regardless of any other characteristics she may possess. In fact, most people assume that a thin (beautiful) woman will have positive characteristics, such as kindness, whereas overweight (or even normal weight) women will have negative characteristics, such as cruelty. The media supports this notion by utilizing women in commercials and on television programs who are underweight.

Unfortunately, female adolescents do not realize that the women on television are not realistic or representative portrayals of the female population. They perceive that the women are appropriately-sized and that such a size will lead to happiness, so they must suffer the consequences: low body satisfaction, poor self-esteem, and sometimes eating disorders.

Surprisingly, a movement has arisen within the past decade to combat this epidemic. Organizations like the National Eating Disorder Association and companies like Dove are working to combat the negativity that the media projects onto young girls. They provide information, workshops, and constant support if the parents or teachers would become involved.

PSA: Correlation is not causation

Today I'm going to do a public service announcement: correlation is not causation. How does this relate to healthy habits and weight loss? Stick around!

Journalistic standards tend to fall when authors are reporting on medical findings. I believe that the reason for this is two-fold: 1) journalists aren't necessarily well-versed in science, and 2) saying something is associated to another factor is far less interesting than saying that it causes another factor. The most common problem I see, aside from misinterpreting some results, is that reporters write as though correlation is the same as causation. I saw a headline today that really threw me--potatoes can add plenty to waistline--so I had to investigate!

Anyone who has taken a basic statistics or research methods course can tell you that there are three rules for determining causation:

1. Establish correlation.
2. Define time relationship.
3. Eliminate intervening variables.

I'll briefly cover what those mean. The first one is pretty simple; you have to show that two things are related reliably (meaning that your test can be replicated and return the same results) and validly (meaning that your test measures that which you intend to measure). The second one is also fairly simple; you have to demonstrate that item A (the causal factor) precedes item B (the caused result).

The third is slightly more difficult, and it's the one that journalists skip most frequently. Intervening variables include anything that could have an effect on item B, even though item A may appear to cause the change. My statistics professor gave the best example I know. Let's say you're at a football game. It starts to rain. Everyone opens umbrellas, and the game continues. However, suddenly the rate of fumbles increases. After a number of games where you observe this, you notice that people always open umbrellas before the fumbling increase. Therefore, you conclude that umbrellas cause fumbles.

Nonsensical, right? We've established 1 and 2, but we haven't eliminated an important intervening variable: the rain! For such a simple example, anyone would confidently say "Wait! You've got it wrong! The two are correlated, but they aren't causal." A recent study from Harvard University scientists (Mozaffarian, Hao, Rimm, Willett, and Hu) published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that "4-year weight change was most strongly associated with the intake of potato chips (1.69 lb), potatoes (1.28 lb), sugar-sweetened beverages (1.00 lb), unprocessed red meats (0.95 lb), and processed meats (0.93 lb) ) and was inversely associated with the intake of vegetables (−0.22 lb), whole grains (−0.37 lb), fruits (−0.49 lb), nuts (−0.57 lb), and yogurt (−0.82 lb) (P≤0.005 for each comparison)" [emphasis mine]. Several dozen newspapers and blog sites around the country picked this important finding and completely distorted it.

Each of those three articles uses terminology to indicate that potatoes "cause," "contributed to," or "led to" weight gain. That's not what the scientists say. It's a subtle difference, but the studies found that daily servings potatoes, particularly fried in some way, were associated with higher weight gain. Everyone in the study gained weight on average, so it's not as though the potato lovers were the only ones packing on the pounds. Journalists are overlooking key intervening variables! Do people who regularly eat some form of potato have other lifestyles that might contribute to higher weight gain? The scientists even point out that you can't say that one food or drink can be shown to consistently affect weight gain across the board: "Eating more or less of any one food or beverage may change the total amount of energy consumed, but the magnitude of associated weight gain varied for specific foods and beverages. Differences in weight gain seen for specific foods and beverages could relate to varying portion sizes, patterns of eating, effects on satiety, or displacement of other foods or beverages" [emphasis mine].

Furthermore, I'm guessing that the journalists didn't actually look at the results graph. The category of potatoes--that they all like to point out adds 1.28 pounds over four years--includes two subcategories: 1) French fried (3.35 pounds over four years), and 2) Boiled, baked, or mashed (0.57 pounds over four years). If you view it that way, French fries were the highest weight gain correlation with 3.35 pounds, far higher than the 1.69 pound gain from eating potato chips. While boiled, baked, or mashed potatoes still weren't a negative correlation, indicating weight loss, that subcategory ranked 8th of the 23 variables in terms of weight gain, landing it between trans fat (0.65 pounds over four years) and refined grains (0.39 pounds over four years).

I know this has been a long blog post, but it's important to keep the correlation versus causation distinction in mind when we read these stories that could influence us to change our lifestyles. Is it easy to learn to interpret statistics to find meaningful results? No, it's certainly not. Is it worth the effort not to mislead the American public? Yes, I absolutely think it is.