Despite being confronted by unrealistic images of beautiful people in the media and the fact obesity is a very real and rising issue, a US survey has found most people reckon they’re hotter than average in the looks department.
The online survey of 26,000 people aged between 18 and 75 was commissioned by MSNBC and Elle magazine, and conducted by researchers at UCLA and California State University, Los Angeles.
Sixty percent said that although they wouldn’t describe their bodies as “ideal”, they were quite satisfied with the way they looked. A majority said they were better looking than the average person, putting themselves between a six and a seven on a 10-point scale, MSNBC reported.
The most confident group were those people younger than 30, with 28 percent of young women and 30 percent of young men rating themselves between an eight and a 10. Sixty-six percent of young women and men said they were “somewhat” to “very satisfied” with their appearance.
This level of satisfaction drops slightly in women older than 50, with only 55 percent of older women stating they are happy with their appearance, compared with 63 percent of older men.
Depressingly, but not surprisingly, 62 percent of women said they felt pressured from magazines and TV to have more attractive bodies — compared to just 29 percent of men who said they felt the same way.
But a study published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior earlier this year, showed that teenage girls tended to compare their own bodies to their schoolmates’ rather than models in magazines or celebrities on TV.
“Most people aren’t of that, ‘Oh my god, I have to be a size two [Australian size six] or I look terrible!’ [mindset],” New York City psychiatrist Dr Gail Saltz told MSNBC. “Most people look … and see who’s around them. And most of the people around them aren’t models.”
With the help of revealing photos published online and in magazines it seems people are becoming more aware of the prolific use of airbrushing to obtain the “impossibly beautiful” effect and that these ideals are just that for the average person — impossible and unrealistic.
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