Two Exploratory Studies of the Impact of Muscular Male Images in Advertising

Introduction Marketers often employ highly attractive models or product endorsers in their advertisements when targeting their products toward women (Bower, 2001). Whereas some consumer researchers examined how attractive images in advertisement affect ad and product evaluations positively(see Belch, Belch, and Vilareal, 1987 for reviews), others blamed advertising and popular media for putting idealized images in the spotlight, transmitting, promoting and solidifying the cultural ideal of female slenderness (e.g., Pollay and Gallagher 1990). As a " distorted mirror " of society, advertising media spotlight not only thin female images (Pollay 1986; Pollay and Gallagher 1990) but also strong, muscular and upscale male images (Kolbe and Albanese 1996). However, relatively little is known about how men are affected by idealized media images (Drewnowski, Kurth, & Krahn, 1995). Therefore, the primary purpose of this paper is to examine whether idealized muscular male models in advertising affect men's perceptions of their body images as well as their image-enhancement behaviors. This paper begins with a literature review of men's body image perceptions and attitudes in general. It then employs the third person effect framework to address the underlying mechanism of the impact of idealized male images in advertising media. Then, it reports findings of two studies. Findings of both experiment and survey are discussed in the end.