Body Image 4 (2007) 269–277 www.elsevier.com/locate/bodyimage

Gaming magazines and the drive for muscularity in preadolescent boys: A longitudinal examination Kristen Harrison *, Bradley J. Bond Department of Speech Communication, 244 Lincoln Hall, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801, United States Received 24 September 2006; received in revised form 28 February 2007; accepted 12 March 2007

Abstract The development of a drive for muscularity among boys has been linked to various cultural influences, one of which is exposure to mass media depicting the muscular male body ideal. We sought to determine whether self-reported exposure to four ideal-body magazine genres (health/fitness, fashion, sports, and gaming) predicted an increased drive for muscularity 1 year later. A sample of 104 Black and 77 White preadolescent boys (mean age 8.77) participated in a 2-wave longitudinal panel study. Controlling Wave 1 grade, perceived thinness/adiposity, and drive for muscularity, exposure to video gaming magazines predicted a significant increase in Wave 2 drive for muscularity, but only for White boys. Discussion calls for the inclusion of video gaming magazine exposure measures in future research on print media and male body ideals, along with empirical exploration of racial themes in gaming magazines. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Keywords: Muscularity; Boys; Media; Video games; Body image; Gaming magazines

Introduction A pixilated, vertically challenged, overweight Italian plumber is no longer the archetypal video game character. Present-day video game heroes are behemoths of muscle and sinew, created by designers to push the boundaries of the male body ideal. The colossal size of these characters is a design element deliberately incorporated into the latest games. Indeed, bulky characters may mean higher ratings and more sales; the October 2004 issue of GamePro stated in a review of a hit video game that ‘‘the most noticeable visual improvements come from . . . beefed-up character

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 217 244 7536; fax: +1 217 244 1598. E-mail address: [email protected] (K. Harrison). 1740-1445/$ – see front matter. Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.bodyim.2007.03.003

models and enhanced character images’’ (Shuman, 2005, p. 2). With increased competition for sales comes increased advertising, much of which appears in gaming magazines. Scharrer (2004) noted that print advertisements for games must ‘‘pique potential users’ interest by allowing vivid, eye-catching glimpses of the features of the game’’ (p. 394). The appearance of characters is one such feature. Gaming magazines therefore have a rightful place next to other magazine genres (e.g., health/fitness, fashion, and sports) known to display idealized images of the male body (Duggan & McCreary, 2004). Research on these genres shows that the desire for a more muscular physique among adolescent males is predicted by increased exposure to health/fitness magazines (Botta, 2003). Furthermore, the number of male-directed magazines skimmed per month positively predicts adult males’ drive for muscularity (Hatoum & Belle, 2004). Hatoum and

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Belle’s list of male-directed magazines included multiple genres, but no gaming magazines. Indeed, gaming magazines have not yet been studied in connection with men’s or boys’ body ideals. The primary aim of this study was to fill this gap in the literature by assessing the association between preadolescent boys’ self-reported exposure to gaming and other ideal-body magazines, and their subsequent drive for muscularity. The drive for muscularity Research shows that men emphasize muscle mass and physical bulk when describing their ideal body shape (Cohn et al., 1987). Whereas women tend to aim for a slender body, men are typically motivated to increase muscle bulk and definition (Salusso-Deonier, Markee, & Pedersen, 1993). McCreary and Sasse (2000) refer to this motivation as the drive for muscularity. The drive for muscularity is not restricted to adults; boys also report the desire for a more muscular physique (Labre, 2002). Children as young as 6 years of age have expressed body dissatisfaction and concerns about their weight (Harrison, 2000). For girls and women such dissatisfaction usually centers on the desire for increased slenderness, but for boys and men, body dissatisfaction can reflect the desire to lose body fat or the desire to build a muscular frame, or both (Labre, 2002; Tylka, Bergeron, & Schwartz, 2005); indeed, research shows that boys of varying body sizes want to be bigger and identify muscularity as a positive attribute (Cohane & Pope, 2001). Further, awareness of the muscular male body ideal (Smolak, Levine, & Thompson, 2001) and the desire to be more muscular (McCreary & Sasse, 2000) both predict the utilization of muscle-building practices among boys. The male body ideal in magazines The increasing idealization of a muscular male physique can be seen throughout American culture. Ideal-body magazine genres such as health/fitness, fashion, and sports are particularly important sites for the display of muscularity as masculinity. Alexander’s (2003) analysis of the health/fitness magazine Men’s Health concluded that the successful man is depicted as having fashion sense, financial success, and a muscular build. Moreover, exposure to fitness magazines has been linked to body dissatisfaction (Duggan & McCreary, 2004) and concerns about muscularity and general fitness (Hatoum & Belle, 2004) among college men.

Conclusions of studies with college-age samples may not apply to prepubescent boys, however, because children may interpret images of masculinity differently than do older adolescents and young adults. Smolak and Stein (2006) found that perceived media influence predicted the drive for muscularity among middleschool boys, but Murnen, Smolak, Mills, and Good (2003) failed to find a significant relationship between magazine exposure and body esteem in boys 6–12 years old. These authors used stimulus images gathered from fashion, sports, and fitness magazines, all genres that feature relatively realistic images of the muscular ideal through the use of live-action photographs of real people. Yet Arbour and Martin Ginis (2006) found that exposure to less realistic, hypermasculine images resulted in more body dissatisfaction than exposure to more realistic images of attainable muscularity. It may be the case that realistic muscular images are too subtle to catch the eye of prepubescent boys, who may respond more strongly to exaggerated images of the muscular male body ideal, such as those featured in gaming magazines. Video gaming magazines An analysis of GI Joe and other popular toys marketed to boys showed that over a 30-year period, male action figures have become so large and muscular that it would be impossible to attain similar proportions in real life (Pope, Olivardia, Gruber, & Borowiecki, 1999). Today’s video game characters might be regarded as ‘‘virtual action figures’’. Boys are avid consumers of video games, playing nearly twice as frequently as girls (Rideout, Roberts, & Foehr, 2005). Because readers of specialized magazines tend to be involved in the pursuits covered by those magazines (Wells, Burnett, & Moriarty, 1998), it follows that boys who play video games are likely to be avid readers of gaming magazines. Gaming magazines are remarkably popular. Game Informer Magazine (GIM), for instance, was 31st on the list of the 100 most-read magazines in the United States in the first half of 2006 (Magazine Publishers of America, 2007). With a circulation approaching 2,000,000, GIM boasted more subscribers than titles like Money, Seventeen, Entertainment Weekly, and Business Week. Among adolescents, Electronic Gaming Monthly, with a circulation of more than 500,000, was listed as one of the highest-circulation teen market magazines in the Marketer’s Guide to Media (Adweek Incorporated, 2006). Further, gaming magazines are especially popular with prepubescent boys. When

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reading for leisure purposes, boys prefer magazines over books and newspapers (Nippold, Duthie, & Larsen, 2005). Topping the list of boys’ favorite magazine genres, which include sports, music, computer, and entertainment-type magazines, is the gaming genre (Cox, 2003). An online survey by the American Library Association (1999) asked school-age children about their leisure reading preferences. Nearly half of the 1246 boys who participated reported that they read magazines about video games. If boys are reading gaming magazines more than almost any other literature, exposure to images of men and masculinity will occur more through gaming magazines than through the more frequently studied body-oriented magazine genres (i.e., health/fitness, fashion, and sports). Content analysis shows that video game characters, moreover, are exaggeratedly muscular (Scharrer, 2004). Thus video gaming magazines, which feature idealized images of such characters in their advertising and editorial content, expose young readers to the hypermuscular adult male body ideal and encourage modeling of this ideal (Bandura, 2002). Following this rationale, exposure to such magazines should foster an increased desire for a muscular body shape. Further, this desire should be apparent among boys who view themselves as relatively heavy as well as those who view themselves as relatively thin since the male body ideal of muscularity is distinct from the ideal of thinness (Tylka et al., 2005). Hypothesis 1. Among a sample of preadolescent boys, self-reported exposure to gaming magazines will predict a subsequent increase in the drive for muscularity, regardless of initial drive for muscularity and perceived thinness/adiposity. Video games and race Research suggests that African American children play more video games than White or Latino children (Bickham et al., 2003); therefore, they have more opportunities to observe and model the attributes of admired characters. However, the characters portrayed in video game magazine advertisements are overwhelmingly White (Scharrer, 2004), reflecting the racial landscape of video games themselves. If these characters are mostly White, social cognitive theory (Bandura, 2002) suggests that, given comparable levels of exposure, White readers should be more motivated to model muscular characters’ appearance and behavior than Black readers due to greater identification with the characters. The fact that the characters are not real

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makes little difference. Research on prepubescent children’s wishful identification with media characters coded as nonhuman, animated human, or live-action human showed that realism did not influence the degree to which children wanted to be like their favorite characters (Hoffner, 1996). Thus, perceived racial similarity could inspire more of a feeling of connection with video game characters than the perceived realism of those characters. Media research (e.g., Harrison & Fredrickson, 2003) shows that the body image of audience members is more likely to be affected by idealized images of same-race individuals than otherrace individuals. Thus, there is reason to expect the relationship between gaming magazine reading and drive for muscularity to be stronger for White boys than for Black boys, a rationale reflected in our hypothesis concerning racial group as a moderator: Hypothesis 2. The relationship between gaming magazine exposure and the drive for muscularity will be stronger for White boys than Black boys. Method Sample A sample comprised of 104 Black and 77 White boys in grades 2, 3, and 4 (mean age 8.77, SD = 1.02) participated as part of a multi-year panel study conducted in elementary schools in three lower- to middle-class Midwestern communities. This study concerns the first two waves of data, collected 1 year apart. One of the communities had a slightly higher proportion of African American students than the other two communities, but there were no differences by community or school in magazine exposure, drive for muscularity, or the control/demographic variables other than race. Since no study has yet correlated gaming magazine exposure with the drive for muscularity among males of any age, we turned to research on more traditional idealbody print media to estimate an effect size for a power analysis. Research on adult males’ drive for muscularity and reading of male-oriented magazines reports a correlation of r = .40 (Hatoum & Belle, 2004), whereas research on adolescent males’ drive for muscularity and health/fitness magazine reading reports a correlation of r = .34 (Botta, 2003). To find the smaller of these correlations statistically significant at a < .05 with a power coefficient of .80, a sample of about N = 70 is necessary (Cohen & Cohen, 1983). Our samples of N = 77 White boys and N = 104 Black both exceed this.

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Procedure All participants obtained parental consent and signed their own assent forms. At both waves of testing, trained research assistants administered questionnaires to groups of 2–5 boys, separated by visual barriers so their responses would remain private. Participants received a novelty pencil as compensation for participation. Measures Self-reported magazine exposure Research shows that the number of male-oriented magazines looked at over a given period of time is a better predictor of the drive for muscularity than hours spent with such magazines during that same period (Hatoum & Belle, 2004). Therefore, exposure was gauged in terms of number of issues rather than estimates of hours spent reading. Participants were given the following stem question (Harrison, 2000): ‘‘Please think about the magazines you like to read or look at. Each week, how many magazines of each type do you read or look at?’’ Several genres were listed, among them health/fitness, fashion, sports, and gaming.1 These genres were chosen because they feature variations on the male body ideal (i.e., fitness models, fashion models, athletes, and video game characters). Boys were given an example for each genre to help them identify it (e.g., for sports magazines: ‘‘Like Sports Illustrated or any sports magazines for kids’’). Response options for each genre ranged from 0 to 5 or more issues. Research with children and adolescents has shown this measure to be a valid indicator of media preferences through expected patterns of correlation with other media exposure measures (Harrison, 2000). Drive for muscularity A child-appropriate version of the Drive for Muscularity Scale (McCreary & Sasse, 2000) was 1

Exposure scores for these four genres were moderately positively correlated, with rs ranging from .22 to .38 (all ps < .05) for the entire sample. This is common for behavioral measures of media exposure because heavy users of one medium are often heavy users of another (Rideout et al., 2005). Although avid readers will probably have high readership scores on multiple print media exposure measures, there is no reason to expect that sports magazine readers, for instance, will necessarily be fashion magazine readers too. Therefore, although our magazine readership scores are intercorrelated, we have opted to keep them separate rather than combining them into one ‘‘overall magazine exposure’’ score to explore the independent influence of exposure to each genre, independent of the others, on drive for muscularity.

used to measure boys’ desire for increased muscle mass. The original scale consisted of 15 items, 5 of which (e.g., I think about taking anabolic steroids; I think that my weight training schedule interferes with other aspects of my life) were removed prior to testing due to institutional review board concerns about their appropriateness for children. Possible responses were also simplified for children to include three options: yes, not sure, no. The 10 items in the final scale were internally consistent (Wave 1 a = .76; Wave 2 a = .80).2 Control and demographic variables To indicate their perceived thinness/adiposity, participants viewed line drawings of prepubescent male children (Tiggemann & Wilson-Barrett, 1998) ranging from markedly thin to markedly fat and were directed to ‘‘circle the picture that shows how YOU look.’’ Responses were coded on a scale of 1 (thinnest figure) to 7 (heaviest figure). Participants also reported their age, grade, and race/ethnicity. The race/ethnicity measure was open-ended; only those boys who described themselves as uniquely Black or White (or

2 The 10 items, revised to maximize their accessibility to children, were as follows: I wish that I had bigger muscles; I eat special foods to make my muscles bigger; I drink special shakes to make my muscles bigger; I try to eat as much food as I can in a day; I think I would feel better about myself if my muscles were bigger; I think that I would look better if I gained ten more pounds of muscle; I think I would feel stronger if I gained a little more muscle; I think that my arm muscles are too small; I think that my chest muscles are too small; I think that my leg muscles are too small. Because some of these items are attitudinal and some are behavioral, an exploratory principal components factor analysis was performed on the Wave 2 Drive for Muscularity Scale to determine whether the appearance of multiple factors would justify the division of the scale into subscales. Three factors with eigenvalues greater than 1.00 emerged in the unrotated factor solution, accounting for 31.61, 16.06, and 10.88% of variance, respectively. According to McCroskey and Young (1979), the unrotated factor solution should be used to determine whether individual items load divergently enough on different factors to justify splitting the scale into subscales. In our factor solution, all of the items loaded positively onto the first factor, with no loading lower than .45. Following Reinard’s (2006) ‘‘60/40’’ rule (any individual item truly belongs to only one factor if the absolute value of its loading on that factor is greater than .60 and its loading on the other factors is less than .40), it was clear that no single item loaded onto factors 2 or 3 without simultaneously loading, equally if not more strongly, onto factor 1. The same analysis was repeated with the Drive for Muscularity Scale measured at Wave 1, with identical results. Thus, there appears to be no compelling reason to divide the drive for muscularity scale into subscales.

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synonyms for these categories) were included in analyses.3

Results Descriptive statistics Table 1 displays Wave 1 and Wave 2 mean scores, standard deviations, and difference tests. For both Black and White boys, magazine exposure scores did not differ significantly from Wave 1 to Wave 2, nor did perceived thinness/adiposity; however, there were significant drops in drive for muscularity. Additional t-tests comparing the mean scores shown in Table 1 by race revealed that Black boys consumed significantly more of all types of magazines than White boys, at both waves: at Wave 1, thealth/ 2.79, p < .01; tfashion(168) = 4.16, fitness(168) = p < .001; tsports(169) = 2.51, p < .01; tgaming(169) = 2.80, p < .01; at Wave 2, thealth/fitness(169) = 2.14, p < .05; tfashion(169) = 3.70, p < .001; tsports(169) = 4.83, p < .001; tgaming(169) = 3.34, p < .001. This is not unusual given African American youths’ heavier media consumption (Rideout et al., 2005). Black boys also reported a significantly greater drive for muscularity than White boys at both waves: at Wave 1, t(169) = 2.59, p < .05; at Wave 2, t(169) = 2.72, p < .01. Perceived thinness/adiposity did not differ by race at either wave: at Wave 1, t(169) = 0.26, p > .10; at Wave 2, t(167) = 0.80, p > .10. Paired-samples t-tests were used to test whether boys’ exposure scores for the four magazine genres differed. For boys of both racial groups, gaming and sports magazines were both more popular than fashion and health/fitness magazines, but gaming magazines were no more popular than sports magazines. Since the same pattern held for Black and White boys, the following t-tests represent the entire sample. For Wave 1: health/fitness magazines (M = 0.68, SD = 1.26) versus fashion magazines (M = 0.91, SD = 1.57), t(168) = 1.73, p < .10; health/fitness magazines versus sports magazines (M = 2.73, SD = 2.11), t(169) = 13.30, p < .001; health/fitness magazines versus gaming magazines (M = 2.67, SD = 2.07), t(169) = 12.21, p < .001; fashion magazines versus sports 3 There were 13 boys participating in the study who identified themselves as both Black and White. Due to the lack of statistical power necessary to test differences between these boys and those who identified solely as Black or White, we omitted this group from analysis.

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magazines, t(169) = 10.93, p < .001; fashion magazines versus gaming magazines, t(169) = 10.02, p < .001; and sports magazines versus gaming magazines, t(170) = 0.19, p > .10. For Wave 2: health/fitness magazines (M = 0.55, SD = 1.25) versus fashion magazines (M = 0.92, SD = 1.48), t(170) = 2.24, p < .05; health/fitness magazines versus sports magazines (M = 2.77, SD = 2.16), t(170) = 13.37, p < .001; health/fitness magazines versus gaming magazines (M = 2.61, SD = 2.05), t(170) = 13.37, p < .001; fashion magazines versus sports magazines, t(170) = 12.08, p < .001; fashion magazines versus gaming magazines, t(170) = 12.08, p < .001; and sports magazines versus gaming magazines, t(170) = 1.03, p > .10. Hypothesis testing To test whether self-reported magazine exposure predicted drive for muscularity, we conducted a multiple regression analysis in which grade, perceived thinness/adiposity, race, and drive for muscularity, all measured at Wave 1, were entered as controls on the first block, followed by the four Wave 1 magazine exposure variables on the second block, followed by terms representing the interaction between racial group and each of the four magazine exposure variables on the third block. The dependent measure was drive for muscularity measured at Wave 2. Grade was controlled because preliminary regression analyses showed that grade predicted drive for muscularity but did not interact significantly with the media variables. Wave 1 perceived thinness/adiposity and drive for muscularity were controlled to increase the rigor of the hypothesis tests. The interaction terms were added to test whether racial group was a statistically significant moderator, as predicted. This analysis showed that the only significant main effect for the sample as a whole was gaming magazine exposure, b = .14, one-tailed t(168) = 2.09, p < .05; however, the interaction term for gaming magazine exposure was also significant, b = .12, onetailed t(168) = 1.81, p < .05. We may therefore conclude that the slopes representing the relationship between gaming magazine exposure and drive for muscularity differed by racial group, in the predicted direction. Given the significance of the interaction, the next step was to repeat the analysis above for White and Black boys separately, minus racial group on step 1 and the interaction terms on step 3. As summarized in Table 2, drive for muscularity at Wave 1 predicted drive for muscularity at Wave 2 for both groups. Beyond that,

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Table 1 Wave 1 and Wave 2 means, standard deviations, and difference tests for key variables, by racial group Variable

Black boys

White boys

W1 M (SD)

W2 M (SD)

Self-reported magazine exposure Health/fitness Fashion Sports Gaming

0.87 1.23 3.02 3.04

0.70 1.10 3.41 3.06

Body perceptions Perceived thinness/adiposity Drive for muscularity

3.48 (1.00) 1.28 (0.42)

(1.49) (1.74) (2.08) (2.09)

(1.45) (1.66) (1.99) (2.01)

3.62 (0.94) 1.13 (0.48)

t (df) 0.97 0.65 1.68 0.08

(102) (103) (103) (103)

1.60 (101) 3.71 (101)***

W1 M (SD)

W2 M (SD)

0.38 0.34 2.17 2.14

0.30 0.33 1.82 1.90

(0.69) (0.99) (2.06) (1.90)

3.40 (1.16) 1.10 (0.46)

(0.78) (0.96) (2.03) (1.91)

3.49 (1.20) 0.92 (0.49)

t (df) 0.72 0.09 1.17 0.91

(77) (76) (77) (77)

0.77 (77) 3.79 (77)***

Note: W1 and W2 denote Wave 1 and Wave 2, respectively. Media exposure scores reflect issues consumed weekly. Perceived thinness/adiposity ranged from 1 (thinnest) to 7 (heaviest). Drive for muscularity ranged from 0 (no) to 2 (yes). ***p < .001.

the only significant magazine predictor was gaming magazine exposure, for White boys only. Regardless of their initial grade, perceived thinness/adiposity, drive for muscularity, and consumption of health/fitness, fashion, and sports magazines, White boys who reported consuming more gaming magazines displayed a greater drive for muscularity 1 year later. To find out whether gaming magazine exposure predicted drive for muscularity in part by fostering underestimation of body size (that is, by lowering scores on the perceived thinness/adiposity measure), we repeated the regression analyses described above with Wave 2 perceived thinness/adiposity as the criterion variable instead of drive for muscularity. For White boys, Wave 1 gaming magazine exposure failed to predict Wave 2 perceived thinness/adiposity (b = .02, t(76) = 0.21). For Black boys, however, Wave 1 gaming magazine exposure was significantly associated with perceived adiposity (b = .17, t(101) = 2.03, p < .05). In other words, Black boys who reported reading more Table 2 Summary of regression analyses predicting Wave 2 drive for muscularity, by racial group Wave 1 predictor

Racial group Black boys DR

b Block 1 Grade Perceived thinness/adiposity Drive for muscularity Block 2 Health/fitness magazines Fashion magazines Sports magazines Gaming magazines

White boys 2

DR2

b

.41*** .27** .16 .54***

.41*** .03 .12 .53***

.02 .09 .14 .02 .03

*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.

.10* .03 .03 .08 .26**

gaming magazines at Wave 1 reported having a heavier body shape at Wave 2. The potential implications of this finding for racial differences in the relationship between gaming magazine exposure and drive for muscularity are discussed below. Discussion The findings of our study echo those of Murnen et al. (2003) in that exposure to magazine genres depicting relatively realistic images of the muscular male ideal – that is, health/fitness, fashion, and sports magazines – did not predict an increased drive for muscularity among boys 1 year later. Exposure to gaming magazines, in contrast, did predict an increase in the drive for muscularity, but only for White boys. There are at least two characteristics of gaming magazines that may explain why the genre appears to play a more important role than more realistic idealbody magazine genres in prepubescent boys’ developing drive for muscularity. First, gaming magazines’ illustrations of exaggeratedly muscular bodies encourage young readers to take notice of the male form. Models in fitness and fashion magazines and athletes in sports magazines, although fit and well formed, do not look much different from the real men encountered by boys in their everyday lives. The male characters in gaming magazines, in contrast, catch the eye because they depart so drastically from the typical male body, even that of an athlete. Since perceived realism does not appear to affect the extent to which children want to be like their favorite media characters (Hoffner, 1996), even such extremely muscular characters as those in gaming magazines could inspire idealization and emulation among young male readers. Furthermore, developmental research on media message processing shows that the distinction between reality and fantasy

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can be blurry for children in the preadolescent years, particularly those under the age of 8 (McKenna & Ossoff, 1998), so the fact that gaming characters are not real does not detract from their potential to serve as role models for boys. The second reason why the gaming genre could play a more prominent role in boys’ developing drive for muscularity than other ideal-body magazine genres is that male video game characters are frequently cast as superheroes, thereby promoting an association between hypermuscularity and the power, control, and agency that superheroes symbolize to children (Haen & Brannon, 2002). The fact that the predicted relationship was significant only for White boys is consistent with the rationale, based on social cognitive theory (Bandura, 2002), that children are more likely to model media personalities they perceive to be similar to them. Since the vast majority of characters in gaming magazine advertisements are White (Scharrer, 2004), there will be more characters for White readers of gaming magazines to identify with than there will be for Black readers—in spite of the fact that Black boys may be heavier gaming magazine readers than White boys, as in our study. It is also possible that Black boys get the bulk of their information about the ideal male form from sources other than gaming magazines, such as Black-oriented media. Research on Black boys’ drive for muscularity and exposure to such media could be designed to test this proposition. The finding that gaming magazine exposure predicted an increase in perceived adiposity among Black boys without predicting an increase in drive for muscularity introduces the interesting possibility that for Black boys, a heavier body may serve as a substitute for increased muscularity, even if the increase in size comes from added body fat, not muscle. Bivariate correlations between Wave 2 drive for muscularity and Wave 2 perceived adiposity were r = .03 and r = .14 for White and Black boys, respectively. Although neither coefficient was significant, their differing directions suggest that a muscular frame is equally desired by both thinner and fatter White boys, but may be more desired by Black boys who think of themselves as thin. This leads to the question of whether, for Black boys, increased body size from adiposity offers some of the same social rewards as increased size from muscularity. Research on body shape descriptions in personal advertisements shows that Black men are more likely to report their body shape and size in such ads, and to have a higher body mass index, than are White men or women of either racial group (Epel, Spanakos, Kasl-Godley, & Brownell, 1996). This suggests that size

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may be positively associated with status for Black men. If this is also the case for Black boys, environmental influences that increase their perception of body size (even from adiposity) may be associated with a decreased drive for muscularity. Why gaming magazine exposure functioned as such an influence for Black boys in this study is unclear, although it may have something to do with video game playing as a predictor of both gaming magazine exposure and increased perceptions of adiposity, based on real weight gain.4 This question awaits further investigation. A key strength of this study is its longitudinal design, which permitted the use of controls including grade, perceived thinness/adiposity, and drive for muscularity at Wave 1. Thus we were able to conclude that, regardless of how thin or heavy they perceived themselves to be and how driven toward muscularity they were at the outset of the study, White boys who reported the greatest exposure to gaming magazines at that time experienced the greatest increase in their drive for muscularity 1 year later. Another strength is the use of a more racially diverse sample than typically employed in this line of research. This extends our findings beyond those of studies using mostly-White samples and raises questions about the role of ethnic identity in the link between ideal-body media exposure and the drive for muscularity. In spite of these strengths, there were noteworthy limitations including the use of self-report measures, which are prone to error due to memory deficits or concerns with social desirability, as well as the use of magazine measures at the genre rather than the title level, and the use of response options framed as number of issues read instead of amount of time spent reading. Although research on adult men shows that the number of magazines read is a better predictor of drive for muscularity than estimated time spent with those magazines (Hatoum & Belle, 2004), having children estimate the amount of time spent with each magazine could serve as a more accurate measure of their actual exposure than asking them to report the number of magazines read in each genre. Furthermore, future research on this topic could greatly enrich our

4

A recent national study linking children’s video game use to obesity reported a curvilinear trend such that heavier children reported moderate amounts of video game use, whereas thinner children reported both the least and greatest usage of video games (Vandewater, Shim, & Caplovitz, 2004). These results were produced by analyses controlling race. Thus, it appears that the relationship between video game playing and weight among Black children is positive, but only up to the point of moderate usage.

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understanding of boys’ processing of gaming magazines and other ideal body media by measuring their exposure to specific magazine titles, and matching these data to content analyses of those titles. Such an approach would allow researchers to investigate racial differences in both representations and effects. Our key control variable measuring boys’ perceived thinness/adiposity was based on a scale depicting prepubescent male bodies with varying levels of apparent body fat, not varying levels of apparent muscle. Due to prepubescent androgen levels, heavily muscled children are rare, so we were unable to find a pictorial scale depicting child bodies that ranged from very thin to very muscular; nonetheless, it would be interesting to explore whether the findings that held for boys with varying levels of perceived adiposity would hold for boys with varying levels of perceived muscularity. The effects of exposure to gaming magazines may depend on how muscular boys perceive themselves to be in the first place. Recall, however, that the Drive for Muscularity Scale contained items assessing perceived muscularity (e.g., ‘‘I think that my chest muscles are too small’’). Since our analyses controlled drive for muscularity at Wave 1 when predicting drive for muscularity at Wave 2, in a sense we did control perceived muscularity along with perceived adiposity in our analyses. Since our findings for White boys were robust in spite of these controls, we suspect that the role played by perceived muscularity in the relationship between gaming magazine exposure and the drive for muscularity is minimal. It is important to note that a potentially important third variable, video game play, was unmeasured. Individuals who read video game magazines are most likely individuals who regularly play video games (Wells et al., 1998). The correlation between gaming magazine exposure and drive for muscularity could be explained in part by the behavior of video game play. Further, video game play could have been the variable driving the unexpected positive correlation between Wave 1 gaming magazine exposure and Wave 2 perceived adiposity for Black boys, if playing video games was associated with increased body weight among this group (see Note 4). Future research would extend our findings by exploring the intercorrelations between video game play, gaming magazine exposure, perceived thinness/adiposity, actual adiposity, and the drive for muscularity. Ultimately, to better understand the role video games and gaming magazines play in boys’ developing drive for muscularity, rigorous and systematic content analyses of these media are needed. At the time of

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