Your Friend Gets Thin. Are You Jealous?

by Maria's Last Diet

Think of it this way. If you are not a model or a movie star or a pop diva, it’s probably not so important to you that you not look like one. That is not your social frame of reference. A model needs to be thin, that is a big part of her life. She compares herself to others in her profession and that is how she sizes herself up.

But not you. You probably look around you in your own world to see how you’re doing. We all tend to do this. We compare ourselves to others who resemble us in the way they live. So if your closest friend did get thin, a woman who is a lot like you, then your comparison to her has much more meaning for you.

In a study of women and body image reported in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin as long ago as 1983, the psychologist researcher Thomas Cash found that women were dissatisfied with their bodies when they compared themselves to the thin bodies of other women in general much more than whey they sized themselves up against models and actresses.

The study worked like this: subjects viewed pictures of very attractive thin women and then were asked to evaluate themselves. A high percentage had a negative view of themselves. Then these same women were shown pictures of thin women who were identified as professional models, and again asked to evaluate themselves. In this case, their self-evaluations were less negative.

Here’s something else for you to consider. In another study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, January 2007, researchers showed that if a woman is already dissatisfied with herself and how she looks, if she goes around with a negative body image of herself in mind, then she is more prone to be affected negatively by comparisons with women around her.

So, rather than just being a jealous person, if you already disliked your body, then your friend’s weight loss is probably affecting you more than it might have if you didn’t harbor a negative body image.