"Strong is the Better Sexy!" Athletes Are Better Role Models Than Sexualized Cover Models For Young Women

Image 1: Photos of like this,
showing athletic women,
during competition, or when
they train, unfortunately,
never make it to the magazine
covers, with their heavily
photoshop-ed images
of male and female
"celebrities".

Those of you who have not skipped my lengthy introduction to Adelfo's latest blogpost will probably have read between the lines that I personally believe that the influence of attitudinal values and believes about themselves and others on failure and success of what people usually refer to as their "transformation" is largely underrated. On the one hand of the extreme, you have those, who run around telling everyone how "happy" they are with the (mostly pretty chubby) "way they are" only to boil out their eyes, when they get home from work and sit lonely in front of their television. Then, you got those people who acknowledge that they are not really satisfied with the way they look, but that the latter "must" obviously be "a consequence of faulty genes" and that those lucky bastards who were born with cover model physiques had absolutely no clue, what they were talking about, when they are talking about "having a plan", "discipline" and all that blabla (those are the people to whom I recommend reading Adelfo's weekly blogposts, the most). And lastly, at the other end of the extreme, you got those poor critters, who are actually looking quite good and/or are continually making progress, and yet still feel even more miserable about themselves than the aforementioned "I am so happy" chubbies, when they are sitting with a bowl of ice-cream in front of their TV...

Role models are more than just people we look up to...

I guess, the latter group was the one Elizabeth A. Daniels had in mind, when she came up with the hypothesis that their young female study participants (age 13-22y) would make different statements with regard to their own physical appearance and attractiveness, when they were confronted with photographs depicting women as (a) sexualized athletes, (b) performance athletes, and (c) sexualized models. To verify this hypothesis, the responses of the 258 adolescent girls (ages 13–18) and 171 college women (ages 18 –22) were assigned to an inductively (meaning based on the scientists interpretation of common motifs in the individual responses) established framework that was constructed around the following  meta-themes, which refer to the physical attributes of the women in the photographs (who were, by the way, no celebrities), "her appearance and attractiveness, her athleticism", or the study participant's feelings about themselves, the women in the pictures and our society, in general (my body/looks, my feelings about her, and society), as well as the role and image of women, in particular.

Within this framework Daniels conducted a numerical (number of answers per theme in condition), as well as a qualitative (positive, neutral, negative for "her body", "physicality", in general, "self evaluation" and "my physical activity") analysis of the responses and derived a few interesting results.

Figure 1: Relative frequency of positive, negative and neutral statement with regard to the physical appearance (her body) and athleticism (physicality) of the athletic women and models in the photographs in the three study conditions (data adapted from Daniels. 2012)

Contrary to what I, personally, would have expected, the young women did provide the most positive responses regarding the "body", i.e. the physical attractiveness of the women in the photographs, when they were confronted with images of "sexualized athletes" (cf. figure 1). Moreover, the photographs of women who engaged in athletic activities elicited mostly neutral responses, yet no negative and at least 28% positive responses.

Not feeling just as bad and that less often may not sound like much, but...

Of greater significance in view of the aforementioned influence the continuously influx of stereotypical images of the "ideal body" are yet the responses Daniels filed under positive, neutral or negative "self-evaluation", of which the presentation of photographs of athletic women elicited the least frequent (only 17.1% self-evaluating statements vs. 40% in the sexualized athletes and 53.8% in the sexualized models condition) and most beneficial (20% positive) self-evaluative comments (cf. figure 2). 

Figure 2: Relative frequency of statements reflecting positive, neutral or negative self-evaluation and positive, negative and neutral attitude towards the personal physical activity of the study participants in the three different study conditions (data adapted from Daniels. 2012)

Now, at first sight, it may seem that the images of athletic women were thusly at most "less detrimental" to the self-image of these young women. If we do yet take into consideration that adolescent girls and young women are generally very critical and often uncomfortable with the way they look and put an emphasis on the fact that 82.9% of the subjects did not even think of how good or, what is unfortunately more likely, bad they feel about themselves, when they were confronted with the images of athletic women, we could speculate that the self-esteem of young women would benefit if there were more images of women engaged in what Daniels refers to "instrumental activities like playing a sport" in the media to "counterweight to the overly-thin standard portrayal of females currently dominating the media".

Moreover, the results of another recent study (Appleton. 2012), which demonstrate that engaging in regular physical activity, alone, exerts profound beneficial effects on the body images of both men and women, suggests that the huge beneficial impact the photographs of athletic women had on the girls' and women's attitudes towards their own physical activity (cf. figure 2), could in indirectly promote the self-esteem of the study participants by instigating or reinforcing their interest in physical activity.

Bottom line: Images of athletes can help you to get active and feel better about yourself!

And although I must admit that people may be more or less predisposed to succumb to the beauty ideals we are confronted with in the media on a daily basis, there is probably hardly anyone who could resist the profound influence they exert on how we think and feel of ourselves and others. Therefore, I strongly caution against the notion that the results of a study which involves only female subjects (age 13-22y) would be meaningless for older women and men of all age groups, who, despite being less willing to admit it, are by no means immune to the subtle messages of six-pack abs, bootylicious butts and unwrinkled skin of the mostly "photoshop-ed" (i.e. digitally enhanced) physique of those pristine specimen of the human race. The motto "Strong is the Better Sexy!" from the title of this blogpost has thusly the potential to become a mantra for everyone who wants to feel better about himself / herself - irrespective of sex or age.

Is it Your Neighbor(hood)'s Fault That You are an Obese Couch Potato? Plus: Higher Incomes Increase Obesity Risk in Men, Better Education Decreases Risk in Men & Women

Image 1: If this photo looks as if it was taken in your neighborhood, statistics say that you will have a harder time than others warding off obesity.

If you have not already been aware that the major weightloss obstacles are not so much of physio- than of psychological, or I should say behavioral natural, Monday's blogpost on the inability or unwillingness of the majority of the study participants in the Krebs study should have reminded you that there is more to losing weight than having an "optimal" diet plan. In this context, the results of a recently published paper from the University of Ottawa, Canada (Prince. 2012), comes to mind, in which Stepanie A. Prince and her colleagues report the results of a large-scale cross-sectional multi-level analysis of the association between neighborhoods, physical activity and obesity in Ottawa.

Mislead and misfed, but by no means unable to afford leading a healthier life-style

Although obviously of epidemiological nature, the study is remarkable in that it relies on relatively recent data (2006-2008) from 494,000 residents from 86 neighborhoods in Ottawa, who were part of the Ottawa Neighborhood Study (ONS). My usual advice not to confuse correlation (no matter how "significant") and causation, does yet still apply. A statement like "for each additional km² of park area per 1,000 inhabitants, the odds of being physically active increased by 17% in the female inhabitants of the respective neighborhood" (cf. figure 1, left; respective value: 1.17) does thusly signify that readily available parks areas seem to encourage women to be more physically active in their leisure time. It does not mean that moving to an apartment from which you can see the joggers doing their rounds in Central Park will turn a couch potato into a sporting ace. After all, it is at least as likely that people who like to jog try to make sure that they move to an area, where they can easily pursue their hobby.

Figure 1: Model predictions for the influence of environmental, social and contextual parameters on physical activity (left) and overweight/obesity rate (right) in men and women; * p < 0.05 (data based on Prince. 2012)

Against that background, I decided to include only factors which showed a statistically significant association with either obesity or physical activity in at least one of the two sexes in the data in figure 1. Now, you rarely have a rule without exception, and in this case, I also included the associative strength with the so-called census-based socio-economic status (SES) index, because the non-existent influence of social status on obesity rates goes just about as nicely against the notion that you cannot eat healthy if you are on a budget, as the +39% increased obesity risk of men in households with incomes >30,000$ (cf. figure 2)

Figure 2: Model predictions for the influence of the individual parameters household income and education overweight/obesity rate in men and women; * p < 0.05 (data based on Prince. 2012)

Moreover, the strong negative association -44% for men and -45% for women between having at least a college degree and being overweight/obese, would would support the argument that it is less about not being able to afford a "healthy lifestyle" than about not having learned / not being able to teach oneself to do so... or, if you will, being more susceptible to the misleading information from the food industry and less aware of the pitfalls of shopping in convenience stores (+17% increased risk of obesity in women per additional convenience store for 1,000 inhabitants) and eating at fast food outlets.

Note: Neither the age nor parameters, such as the number of indoor or outdoor recreational facilities, grocery stores, specialty stores and (normal) restaurants which, at least taken in isolation, had no statistically significant influence on either physical activity or obesity rates.

With respect to the +22% and +39% increased obesity risk per additional fast-food outlet (per 1,000 inhabitants), it should also be mentioned that this is only one out of several of the environmental factors, which had statistically significant influence only on obesity rates in women from the respective neighborhoods - a phenomenon, which could yet be a consequence of the fact that men are less likely to be in their respective neighborhood during working hours than women, so that the susceptibility to fast food stores is probably not gender-specific ;-)

The bitter or delighting truth about your neighbor(-hood ;-)

It is nevertheless quite remarkable that the associative strength of individual criteria such as age, income, education etc. showed an overall much more pronounced variation (0.98, p<0.05), than one of the area-specific variables, the variance of which did not reach statistical significance for either of the two study outcomes, i.e. physical activity level or overweight/obesity (cf. figure 1). This would suggest that environmental influences in the area we live in is in fact a more reliable indicator of our likelihood of ending up as an overweight couch potato or lean physical culturist than our incomes, education or say our age. A finding, which I would say is actually quite remarkable, don't you think so?