“If Only I were Thin Like Her, Maybe I Could be Happy Like Her”: The Self-Implications of Associating a Thin Female Ideal with Life Success

Abstract

Women often feel dissatisfied with their appearance after comparing themselves to other females who epitomize the thin-ideal standard of beauty. The current study posits that women associate a thin-ideal female body type with positive life-success, and that it may be this psychological link that drives feelings of negativity toward the self after such upward social comparisons. The results revealed that women reported more self-dissatisfaction and less optimism about their possible future life outcomes after exposure to a thin-ideal female target that ostensibly had a successful life than when the target ostensibly had an unsuccessful life.