The Mediating Role of Media Internalization in Body Scrutinization and Body Image Dissatisfaction in Thai Homosexual Male Youth

The debilitating impact of body image dissatisfaction has been well-documented, leading to attempts to propose ways to alleviate the dissatisfaction. These proposals are drawn primarily from findings from studies on female youth. The current study extends this work, and contributes to an emerging initiative to attempt to reduce body image dissatisfaction in homosexual male youth. Past empirical findings have identified these adolescents to be particularly prone to body image dissatisfaction. With the formal operational stage of cognitive development, adolescents are particularly self-conscious and scrutinize their body image more critically, leading to body image dissatisfaction. The aim of the current study was to identify a potential protective factor that might help reduce the impact of body scrutinization in Thai homosexual male adolescents. These participants were selected due to the relative lack of published research on body image in Asian homosexual males. Additionally, despite its orientation toward the collectivistic fulfillment of social roles and obligations, Thai culture is quite accepting of sexual minorities. Homosexual male body image ideals are portrayed in the media with relatively high frequency. For this reason, internalization of media influence was selected as a potential mediator of the relationship between body scrutinization and body image dissatisfaction. Data were collected from 114 Thai homosexual male youths who responded to online questionnaires measuring body scrutinization, media internalization, and body image dissatisfaction. As hypothesized, findings demonstrated that body scrutinization significantly predicted both body image dissatisfaction and media internalization. Media internalization significantly but partially mediated the relationship between body scrutinization and body image dissatisfaction. Implications were discussed in terms of the preventative and therapeutic potentials for reducing media influence on body image dissatisfaction when the scrutinization was engaged.