The Simulacra Effect: The Effect of Media Simulations on Eating Disorder Symptomology in Gay Men

ABSTRACT

Researchers have uncovered a disturbing trend in the gay community: Gay men are at an increased risk for disordered eating. Researchers in this area generally support the existence of a sociocultural component to this phenomenon; however, these assertions have not been experimentally tested. We attempted to demonstrate that media representations targeted toward gay men have the potential to affect disordered eating and self-perception. Results showed that contrary to the hypothesis, the experimental group did not show an increase in eating disorder symptomology; in some cases, the opposite occurred. Implications of the importance of identifying with media images are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Eating disorders
• body dissatisfaction
• media influence
• male homosexuals

Notes

1. Sexual orientation was established using a Kinsey Scale (Kinsey, Pomeroy, & Martin; 1948) ranging from 1 (“exclusively heterosexual”) to 7 (“exclusively homosexual”). The mean score on this scale was 6.6 (SD = .616).

2. Siever (1994) recognized that because these devices were developed to detect more extreme aspects of disordered eating, as seen in clinical samples, they would encounter a floor effect in the data as a result of the scoring, not the actual data itself. Additionally, by considering each factor as a separate variable, Siever (1994) was able to avoid collapsing patterns of disordered eating most likely to be considered socially acceptable into a single variable. Siever (1994) also altered the metric used for assessment of each item so that each item was assessed on a scale of one to six instead of the traditional scoring methods for the EAT-26 and EDI. Thus, the experiment used this technique per Siever's (1994) methodology; this method has been used in previously published research in this area (Boroughs & Thompson, 2002; Lakkis et al., 1999; Williamson & Hartley, 1998) and is believed to be a valid one for the current study.

3. Due to the increased probability to committing a Type I Error when drawing conclusions from a series multiple independent analyses based on a single independent variable a MANOVA was conducted to test the overall significance of the results obtained from the t tests performed earlier. A one way MANOVA was calculated examining the effect of group assignment to either experimental and or control conditions on scores from the EAT-26 and selected EDI subscales. No significant effect was found (Lambda(1,58) = .84, p = .29).