Buying a beauty standard or dreaming of a new life? Expectations associated with media ideals

This study explored college women's ideas regarding how their lives would change if their appearance were consistent with a media-supported female beauty ideal. Participants rated self-generated life changes they associated with looking like a media ideal in terms of likelihood and positivity. Women's tendency to link positive and likely life expectations with looking like the media ideal was significantly associated with both internalization of media ideals and appearance-related dissatisfaction. However, internalization fully mediated the relationship between expectations and appearance-related dissatisfaction. Results are discussed in terms of implications for understanding the nature of internalization and implications for the design of programs targeted at reducing appearance-related dissatisfaction and eating disordered behaviors.