850 Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 2005, 35, 4, pp. 850-868. Copyright © 2005 by V. H. Winston & Son, Inc. All rights reserved. The Effects of Instructional Frame on Female Adolescents’ Evaluations of Larger Sized Female Models in Print Advertising 1 BARBARA LOKEN 2 JOANN PECK Carlson School of Management School of Business University of Minnesota University of Wisconsin–Madison Despite growing attention to problems associated with girls’ and women’s viewing unreal- istic portrayals of women in advertising, little research has identified positive consequences of presenting larger sized females in advertisements. The present research examined these positive effects and found that instructions that support the use of larger sized females in ads (relative to a more traditional instructional frame) heightened adolescent girls’ ratings of the larger sized models’ attractiveness, self-attractiveness, and self-esteem without changing girls’ ratings of thinner sized models. General and valenced self-referencing (pos- itive and negative self-thoughts while viewing the ads) were examined as potential media- tors of the instructional effects on self-attractiveness and self-esteem. The findings provide evidence that girls’ perceptions can be altered in a positive manner through media images of women. The American Association for University Women (AAUW, 1990) recently reported that in a study of 36,000 students in Minnesota, girls were three times more likely than boys to have negative body image, to say they feel badly about themselves, and to believe that others see them in a negative light. Other research reports are similarly disturbing. One third of all adolescent girls in Grades 9 through 12 think they are overweight, and 60% say they are trying to lose weight, yet only 11% are actually overweight (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women’s Health, 1999). The increase in rates of eating disorders and body dissatisfaction among ado- lescent and preadolescent girls has alarmed researchers, who have wondered whether the media images that pervasively show thin models are contributing to body-image dissatisfaction, lower self-esteem, excessive dieting, eating 1 The authors thank the Madison, Wisconsin, public school system for their valuable assistance with data collection. The project was supported in part by a McKnight-BER grant from the Carlson School of Management to the first author. 2 Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Barbara Loken, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, 321 19th Avenue South Suite 3-140, Minneapolis, MN 55455. E-mail: bloken@csom.umn.edu; or Joann Peck, School of Business, University of Wisconsin, 975 University Avenue, Madison, WI 53706. E-mail: jpeck@bus.wisc.edu