Family, Life Course, and Society Commons^™

Media Messages About Body Image And Food: Adolescent Perceptions Of Contradictory Messages In Television Commercials, Carrie Wise

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This study had two primary purposes, the first of which was to examine contemporary television media messages and to ascertain whether there exists an ideological contradiction between messages associated with ideal body types and messages associated with obesity. The second purpose was to explore adolescents' perceptions of these messages and to understand their possible effects on adolescents. This study was conducted using a fallibilitic realism methodological approach. Two data collection methods were used in this study. A content analysis of current television commercials was conducted, from which three major findings emerged. First, there was a high frequency of commercials containing …