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Of course, it has become nearly dogma that media exposure relates to poor body image, and a frequently cited statistic is that age thirteen, 53% of American girls are unhappy with their bodies. This grows to 78% by the time girls reach seventeen, and that teens who watched soaps and TV shows that emphasized the ideal body typed reported higher sense of body dissatisfaction. This was also true for girls who watched music videos (Media's effect on girls: Body image and gender identity, 2008, National Institute on Media and the Family). But asserting this claim may not mean that viewing soap operas and consuming unrealistic media images causes such dissatisfaction, rather more insecure individuals may seek out more negative, ultra-thin images, and the sources of their unhappiness with their physical body may be found in originating causes other than media exposure. In fact, a recent study that attempted to study the effects of length of exposure upon body image came to the surprising finding that women who consumed more media over the course of a week, despite the high prevalence of images of unrealistic ideals that these women could not live up to in the media they consumed, actually

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