{"id":36605,"date":"2015-04-29T13:26:13","date_gmt":"2015-04-29T17:26:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=36605"},"modified":"2015-04-29T13:26:13","modified_gmt":"2015-04-29T17:26:13","slug":"wearing-thin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2015\/04\/29\/wearing-thin\/","title":{"rendered":"Wearing thin"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Professional<\/a>

From left: Professional Psychology student researchers Christina Zawalski and Jill Klotzman, assistant professor Christopher Modica, and student researchers Stephanie-Jane Okpara and Erin Maggard. The group is participating in the Body Project, a national research and prevention program.<\/p><\/div>\n

Thin, toned women. They stare out from magazine covers, television ads, billboards, Facebook posts and virtually every medium. Images of their so-called ideal body type are so pervasive and relentless that they\u2019ve become an accepted part of the landscape.<\/p>\n

But there is a dark side. This \u201cthin ideal\u201d rattles the self-esteem of many young women and can lead to body dissatisfaction and full-blown eating disorders. Up to 10 percent of the female population may have clear clinically diagnosable disorders or subclinical disorders.<\/p>\n

Wright State University is playing a part in helping to change that.<\/p>\n

A group of students pursuing their Psy.D. degrees at the School of Professional Psychology<\/a> is launching a study for the Body Project, a national research\/prevention program designed to help young women resist sociocultural pressures to conform to the thin ideal as well as to improve body satisfaction and reduce eating disorders.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the leading eating-disorder prevention program out there,\u201d said assistant psychology professor Christopher Modica, Ph.D., who is supervising the students on the project. \u201cIn my career, this is maybe a once-in-a-lifetime thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The idea for the project at Wright State began when Modica began communicating with Eric Stice, a senior research scientist at the Oregon Research Institute and an expert in eating disorders, obesity and depression. Stice is the creator and manager of the Body Project.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal is to improve body satisfaction and mood, reduce the use of unhealthy weight-control behaviors and decrease binge eating and other eating-disorder symptoms,\u201d Modica said.<\/p>\n

\"Christopher<\/a>

Wright State assistant psychology professor Christopher Modica is supervising the students on the Body Project.<\/p><\/div>\n

The Wright State project will be led by four student researchers. Once they design the study, get Institutional Review Board approval and receive training from Stice, they will recruit young female Wright State students to take part in the study by meeting in groups of six to 10 beginning fall semester.<\/p>\n

Student researcher Jill Klotzman, of Cleveland, said the Body Project at Wright State will focus on the role of the media in promoting the thin ideal. She believes the problem is at nearly epidemic levels.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to raise awareness about this thin ideal because a lot of times it\u2019s almost subliminal,\u201d said Klotzman, who plans to use some of the results in her dissertation.<\/p>\n

Student researcher Christina Zawalski, of Rochester, N.Y., said she has heard comments from her female peers such as: \u201cI\u2019m not going to eat for a week so I can fit into my dress this weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople tend to think it\u2019s not such a big deal because it\u2019s such a part of our community and our society,\u201d said Zawalski.<\/p>\n

Especially dangerous, says Modica, is when women \u201cinternalize\u201d the thin ideal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey buy into it and say, \u2018Yeah, women should look like that and I want to look like that,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cIt becomes part of how they evaluate themselves and others.\u201d<\/p>\n

The student researchers will measure the degree to which young women approve or disapprove of their bodies, the degree to which they internalize the ideals and any eating-disorder behaviors. The students will then go through the Body Project program, be re-measured and perhaps measured again two months later.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will be looking for decreases in problematic eating behaviors and\/or eating disorders, the degree to which they\u2019ve internalized these ideals of what is beautiful and decreases in body dissatisfaction,\u201d said Modica.<\/p>\n

He said research has shown that the positive effects of the Body Project on its participants can last up to three years.<\/p>\n

Student researcher Stephanie-Jane Okpara, of Riverdale, Md., said the researchers are looking for students who express some kind of body dissatisfaction so that their progress can be measured.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I like about the Body Project is they have exercises that enable the participants to challenge other people,\u201d said Okpara, adding that the program will give students ammunition to rebut and educate when it comes to perceptions about the thin ideal.<\/p>\n

One of the exercises will be to show the test subjects different photos of supermodels and ask them what features they think are \u201cideal\u201d but unrealistic, such as small waists and large chests.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that by helping them identify that this isn\u2019t realistic, we can increase their cognitive dissonance and let go of this belief,\u201d said student researcher Erin Maggard. \u201cBy pushing that, they\u2019re going to adopt more of a healthy mindset.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maggard said many people who suffer from eating disorders avoid seeking treatment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a way of protecting the disorder; they don\u2019t want it to go away. It\u2019s that fear of being fat,\u201d she said. \u201cSo it takes some coaxing and challenging those beliefs over and over.\u201d<\/p>\n

Klotzman hopes the Body Project teaches students how to start a conversation about the problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s something that we don\u2019t really talk about because it\u2019s so ingrained in our society; it\u2019s so normalized,\u201d she said. \u201cWe want to give these students skills not only to improve their own self-image, but teach them how to be advocates. We\u2019re trying to get girls to focus more on health rather than just focusing on body shape.\u201d<\/p>\n

Klotzman wants to have a career helping people with eating disorders.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there is a widespread misunderstanding that eating disorders are a lifelong affliction,\u201d she said. \u201cThere is such a thing as full recovery from eating disorders.\u201d<\/p>\n

Modica said the Body Project sessions will be a place where students can come and talk about the origin of their body-image concerns.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it\u2019s an opportunity to evaluate whether you want to accept messages that society gives you or not, and analyzing the costs of accepting them and the benefits of rejecting them,\u201d said Modica. \u201cIt\u2019s an opportunity to get to a place where you accept who you are, accept your body and have a much clearer sense of what you think is beautiful and not put so much pressure on yourself to fit some ideal that\u2019s really unattainable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wright State Professional Psychology students will participate in the Body Project, a national research study on body dissatisfaction and eating disorders. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":36607,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[722,2023,725,715,2407,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","category-faculty","category-home-news-sidebar","category-news","category-professional-psychology","category-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36605"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36611,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36605\/revisions\/36611"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}