Body weight and shape ideals are highly variable across time periods and across cultures, and laboratory research shows that our preferences are flexible. Visual media – both traditional and new social media forms – exert particular influence on conceptions of body attractiveness. I will discuss work examining the influence of visual experience on body preferences, and the downstream impacts on body image, in adults and children, both in the UK and in a population experiencing significant changes in media access and broader globalisation.

Speaker Bio

Lynda Boothroyd is a Professor of Psychology at Durham University. She has spent 20 years researching attraction and more recently focused on body ideals. This involves fieldwork in rural Nicaragua alongside experimental work with children and adults. She takes a multidisciplinary approach to her research, incorporating perspectives from Evolutionary Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Social Psychology and Biological Anthropology, and has incorporated a mixed-methods component in her current work. She is also involved in developing and running body image education programmes.