Girl bands such as Girls Aloud, Pussycat Dolls and the Sugababes have come under flack from researchers who fear that by promoting an ideal
Girl bands such as Girls Aloud, Pussycat Dolls and the Sugababes have come under flack from researchers who fear that by promoting an ideal for what a woman’s figure should look like, they are having a detrimental impact on teenage girls.
Researchers from the universities of Leeds and Sussex conducting a new study on the impact of such groups where all the band-members are skinny, found that watching such videos for only 10 minutes makes girls between the ages of 16 to 19 feel worse about their own bodies.87 teenage girls from a Roman Catholic girls’ sixth-form college took part in the study.
As a part of the study the researchers asked a group of 30 girls to watch music videos by girl bands for ten minutes, while the remaining 57 girls were involved in control tests in which they either listened to the music without seeing the video, or were asked to memorise a list of words.
“Music videos often feature scantily clad models whose dance movements further high-light the size, shape and proportions of their bodies,” Times Online quoted the researchers, as saying.
“Among these idealised models are young women who epit-omise the female ideal of ultra-thinness, and who can function as aspirational role models for adolescent girls,” they added.
The researchers found that girls who watched the videos for just 10 minutes had a noticeable rise in their discontent about their bodies.
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The study is published in the journal Body Image.
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