Women tend to think that men like female bodies to be skinnier than they actually do—and the same skewed perception is true of men, who think that women like male bodies to be more muscled than they really do. A group of UCLA psychologists wondered whether the media might play a role in these disconnects, so they looked at magazines that cater to male and female readers to see whether they have depicted different shapes for the ideal male.

What the researchers wanted to know: Are men in men's magazines more muscled than men in women's magazines?

What they did: The researchers made color copies of a couple years of covers of Men's Health, Men's Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness, a magazine aimed at male bodybuilders. They also made copies of 28 monthly "Hunk of the Month With His Shirt Off" pictures from Cosmopolitan. Then five undergraduate research assistants sat down with the pile of photos and rated them for muscularity, using a visual scale.

What they found: The men pictured in Cosmopolitan—the ideal man as presented to women—were less muscular than the men depicted in the men's magazines. The men on the cover of Muscle & Fitness were the most muscular of all. The researchers think that these media images help influence what people imagine to be the ideal shape for members of the opposite sex.

What the study means to you: Like women who think that men want them to be supermodel skinny, men carry around skewed ideas about what women find attractive. This is a reminder that our ideas about body image don't form in a vacuum; media images help to influence them.

Caveats: Of course, magazines don't arise in a vacuum either; humans with their own ideas about attractiveness pick the models and photographs.

Find out more: The National Eating Disorders Association has information on how men can improve their body image.

Read the article: Frederick, D.A., et al. "Do Representations of Male Muscularity Differ in Men's and Women's Magazines?" Body Image. March 2005, Vol. 2, pp. 81–86.

Article online: http://www.sciencedirect.com