"You look great in that! So skinny!" I'm sure you've heard that type of comment in any situation where two or more women are present. The ultimate compliment – so skinny! When I hear this, it's usually tinged with just a little bit of envy. Social psychologists have a name for this. In the 1954, Leon Festinger called it the social comparison theory. According to him, it's human nature to base our own self worth on how the people around us are doing. The strange exception to this rule is women and body image. When we compare ourselves to unrealistic beauty ideals that we see in magazines or in person, we keep trying to meet those ideals, even if deep down we know it's impossible. My theory is that Festinger could never have predicted this, because he lived before the age of streaming Internet and color screen TVs. The good citizens of Nadroga, Fiji, were completely naive to American media in 1995. That's when the first television sets were brought into the region. Some researchers (Becker, Burwell, Herzog, Hamburg, and Gilman, 2002) took a look at what happened next, and it was frightening. Before the introduction of TV, the native Fijians thought that robust and curvy women were beautiful, and they saw no need for dieting.

The rate of bulimia? Zero. Three years later, most of the population had TVs, and 74% of the people surveyed said they felt too big or fat at least some of the time. And 11.3% of those said they vomited in order to lose weight. A total of 77% of those who were surveyed stated that television had influenced their body image, and many articulated that they wanted to look more like Western television characters. The citizens of Nadroga had learned to feel disgust at the very bodies that they found acceptable before the media images infiltrated their minds. In our current culture, we can't always control the images that flash before our eyes. We can, however, control whether we choose to let the media and advertisers tell us which characteristics are attractive. Next time you feel like commenting on someone's dress size, try looking a little bit deeper, and saying something that is truly meaningful. You look radiant with joy! You seem so confident right now? This Independence Day, let's give ourselves a break from the cycle of comparison, and relax in our skin, cellulite, and all.