Does that ideal really matter? TODAY wanted to visualize how far we are from what we imagine is the ideal figure and our average bodies. Pittsburgh artist Nickolay Lamm — who showed the world what Barbie would look like as an average year-old woman — reveals our "real" selves in a set of 3-D illustrations for TODAY, based on recent British study. Plus-size men now have a word of their own. British researchers gave young heterosexual Caucasian men and women a chance to design ideal bodies, one for themselves and one for a hypothetical mate.
The study, published in in , used 40 female and 40 male heterosexuals with an average age of just over 19 — university students, mainly. They presented each person with 3-D computer representations of bodies. Each participant could adjust the images in many different ways until they arrived at the ideal body for their gender, and the ideal body of the other gender.
The results of this study revealed a couple of surprises. First, the ideals ran across genders. Men and women barely differed in their opinion of what an ideal body looked like, whether the ideal was for a male or a female.
Some may find that they typically store fat in their mid-section, while others may put weight on in their thighs, legs, or arms first.
For example, stress can trigger your body to release the hormone cortisol. Research suggests that stress-induced cortisol may be tied to fat buildup around your most vital organs in your mid-section.
Estrogen and progesterone, released by sexual organs, can also affect how your body stores fat. Estrogen, for example, can lead your body to store fat in your lower abdomen.
Older adults tend to have higher levels of body fat overall. Two contributing factors include a slowing metabolism and gradual loss of muscle tissue. Aging can also affect mobility, resulting in a more sedentary lifestyle.
This could lead to weight gain. Aging can even affect your height. Many people find that they gradually become shorter after age This can affect how your body looks overall.
According to a review , menopause may also change your body shape and fat distribution by redistributing more weight to your abdomen. If you want to change certain things about yourself — for you and because you want to — exercise could make a difference.
For example, you might be able to give your arms more muscle definition with regular training. Research has also found that genetic factors can affect your resting metabolic rate. If you have any concerns about your body — including how it feels or the way it moves — talk to a doctor or other healthcare provider. Simone M. Scully is a writer who loves writing about all things health and science. Find Simone on her website , Facebook , and Twitter.
Shifting your inner dialogue from negative to positive can boost your mental health and overall outlook on life. When people talk about breast size, they often describe it in terms of bra size. In the first, we presented 78 undergraduate female participants with images of Miss USA winners between and Because winners are selected annually, they serve as a relevant representation of what is considered attractive. For the study, we depicted the pageant winners from the neck down wearing black two-piece swimsuits.
Participants then rated each winner on her level of thinness, muscularity and attractiveness. The ratings demonstrated that the winners became thinner and more muscular over the year span. In a second study, we wanted to examine whether women had begun to prefer this thin, toned body type. So we presented 64 undergraduate female participants with two versions of seven different images.
One version featured a thin, muscular model. In the other, the muscle tone and definition were digitally removed, leaving the model appearing to be only thin. Participants viewed these images one by one in random order and were asked to rate them on thinness, muscularity and attractiveness, and to identify how typical they were of images in the media.
Results showed that participants could detect the difference in muscularity among the images and rated all of them as typical of media images.
However, they did not clearly identify one type of figure as being more attractive than the other. In a final portion of this study, we showed participants the pair of images side by side and asked them to identify which they preferred.
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