The cosmetic surgery industry has rapidly expanded and Professional Associations for surgery in the UK and USA have expressed concern over the ways in which surgery is portrayed in the media. This thesis aimed to investigate how different portrayals of cosmetic surgery in the media impact women and adolescent girls' body image and attitudes towards surgery. Moreover, it examined a number of moderating variables which may affect responses to such media. The first three studies examined the impact of different aspects of cosmetic surgery advertising on adult women using experimental designs. Study 1 (N=161) looked at the effect of including discount incentives or risk information on women's attitudes towards surgery and body image. Study 2 (N=151) examined the effect of different images in cosmetic surgery advertising (female models, locations, scalpels or control images) on the same outcomes. Study 3 (N=145) was a replication of Study 1, looking at whether discount incentives and risk information have a similar impact in Switzerland, a country with less exposure to cosmetic surgery. The final two studies focused on adolescent girls aged 15-18 using mixed methods. Study 4 was a qualitative focus-group investigation of girls' (N=17) attitudes towards surgery. Study 5 experimentally examined the impact of different information provided in cosmetic surgery reality television (risks associated with surgery versus no risks) on girl's (N=99) body image and attitudes towards cosmetic surgery. Results from these studies consistently showed cosmetic surgery advertising and television shows have a negative impact on women and girls' body image. Attitudes towards cosmetic surgery varied as a result of different content of advertising. Moreover, materialistic values moderated how women and girls responded to cosmetic surgery advertising or reality shows across all studies, whereas restrained eating, body dissatisfaction and basing one's self-worth on appearance played a less consistent role in responses.

No description available.

There is a strong body of psychological research implicating the mass media in the aetiology of adolescent girls' negative body image and eating behaviours. The present thesis aims to extend this research by examining potential factors – namely, media type, body perfect internalisation and materialism – that make girls more vulnerable to the negative impact of the mass media. An initial meta-analysis (Chapter 3) collated the findings of existing research examining the impact of ‘body perfect' media on adolescents' body image; examining gender, age and media type as moderators of this effect. Chapter 4 examined the relative roles of both media type and media model identification (a key dimension of body perfect internalisation), within the mass media and body image relationship. Using both survey and experimental methods (N = 199), it was found that adolescent girls' habitual tendency to identify with media models, was a more potent vulnerability factor within the mass media and body image relationship, than media type. Due to the limitations associated with existing measures of body perfect internalisation, a new measure of body perfect internalisation was developed in Chapter 5 (N =373), which was subsequently utilised in the final experiments of the thesis. Chapter 6 demonstrated that acute music video exposure had a more potent negative impact on girls' body image than still media images (N = 142); an effect that was fully mediated by wishful character identification and also moderated by body perfect internalisation. Chapter 7 consists of two studies that demonstrate the important role which materialism plays within the mass media, body image and eating behaviour relationship. In Study 1, structural equation modelling identified a direct pathway between materialism and restrained eating that was independent of body image (N = 199). This finding was further replicated in an exposure experiment, which demonstrated that brief exposure to materialistic media causes acute diet-like behaviours in adolescent girls (N = 180).

This study is concerned with the role of sound in the presentation and representation of bodies in performance art that incorporates digital technologies. It consists of a written thesis accompanied by a portfolio with documentation of original artwork. Since the 1960s, performance artists have explored the use of sensor technologies to register signals generated by the body and synthesize or control sound. However, both practical and theoretical approaches to biosignal sonification in this field have almost entirely focused on musical (formalist) perspectives, technological innovation, or heightening the performer's and spectator's awareness of their body's physiology. Little attention has been paid to the usually conspicuous interaction between body and technological equipment and the role of the generated sound in the context of cultural critical debates regarding the performing body. The present study responds to this observation in two ways: Firstly, the written part of the study examines existing biosignal performance practices. It seeks to demonstrate that artists' decisions on the design of sensor technology and sound synthesis or manipulation methods are often complicit in the representation of normative body types and behaviour. Drawing from a concept of the sonified body as a transgressive or ‘freak' body, three critical perspectives on biosignal sonification in digital performance are proposed: A reading of body sonification methods from a gender-critical perspective, an inquiry in the context of Mikhail Bakhtin's concepts of the grotesque and the classical body, and a conceptualization of the sonified body as a posthuman prosthetisized body. This part of the study serves as a framework for its second objective: the development of practical performance strategies to address and challenge cultural conventions concerning ‘the' body's form and role in society. This aspect of the thesis is developed in conjunction with, and further explored in, the artwork documented in the portfolio. The practical part of the study consists of three digital performance works. ELECTRODE (2011) involves an anal electrode that registers the activity of my sphincter muscle and uses this data to synthesize sound. For this work, I modified a commercially available muscle tension sensor device designed for people with faecal incontinence problems. Feedback (2010) encompasses components of a commercially available fetal Doppler sensor intended to listen to the heartbeat of unborn babies. SUIT (2009-2010) encompasses several performances that feature a PVC overall equipped with a loudspeaker, sensor interface and Doppler and humidity sensors.