The Effect of Experimental Presentation of Images of Women in Magazine Advertising and Works of Art on Body (Dis)satisfaction in Adolescent Girls

The present study was the first to investigate the influence of artistic images of women on adolescent girls’ body attitude. The results have shown that a 10-minute exposure to artistic images of women by such great masters as Titian, Botticelli or Degas significantly changed body attitude in teenage girls, which was expressed through increased body satisfaction, decreased body dissatisfaction, and weakening of negative body emotion. Those outcomes have also confirmed the results of the existing studies exploring the negative influence of magazine advertising on teenage girls’ body experiencing. The comparison of two study groups has shown that girls looking at women in works of art expressed a significantly higher level of body satisfaction than girls exposed to women in advertisements.