This one’s for the record books—and the fashion magazines—as a new study published by the American Marketing Association’s Journal of Public Policy & Marketing has found that increasing the use of plus-sized models in advertising campaigns may actually be contributing to the growing rates of obesity.

The somewhat ironic study, coming out of Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business, found that the increased presence of non-traditional models with larger body types and the decreased presence of ultrathin and aesthetically flawless models can negatively effect society’s lifestyle and eating behavior.

Obesity as socially acceptable

Looking closer at these fashion trends’ newest effect, researchers conducted five experiments studying how subjects would react to cues suggesting that obesity was socially acceptable.

In each experiment, participants displayed greater intent or actual consumption of unhealthy foods and less motivation to engage in a healthier lifestyle based on their increased belief that obesity was, in fact, more socially acceptable.

Looking at the results, co-authors Brent McFerran at the Beedie School of Business and Lily Lin from the College of Business & Economics at California State University suggest a link between the efforts to increase acceptance and body anxiety. Ironically creating the opposite effects of what marketing campaigns were hoping to achieve, the increased acceptance of larger body types has escalated the amount of thought consumers put into their appearance.

So what’s next?

Now, their task is to look at the implications the study shows for both public policy makers and advertisers. Researchers advise an even closer look at how body types are presented in advertising. Possibly now marketing campaigns won’t focus on any suggestion that a certain body shape is “good” or “bad.”

“Although this study demonstrates that accepting larger bodies is associated with negative consequences, research also shows that ‘fat-shaming’—or stigmatizing such bodies—fails to improve motivation to lose weight,” said McFerran.

“Since neither accepting nor stigmatizing larger bodies achieves the desired results, it would be beneficial for marketers and policy makers to instead find a middle ground—using images of people with a healthy weight, and more importantly, refraining from drawing attention to the body size issue entirely.”

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