Rethinking Visual Ethics: Evolution, Social Comparison and the Media's Mono-Body in the Global Rise of Eating Disorders

Abstract

This study applies evolution theory to visual ethics and argues that social comparison theory favored by scholars of eating disorders is actually a Darwinian maladaptation to the media's widespread digital manipulation of women's bodies creating the thin ideal. An evolutionary perspective suggests how the media is enmeshed and why social comparison of the mediated “mono-body” will continue. This study has three sections: 1) evolution theory and morality; 2) social comparison, biology of the social gaze, and anthropological evidence of Western media's role in the global rise of eating disorders; and 3) rethinking visual ethics to expand Newton's (2001) mass interpersonal relationship.