We all know that most women and men that we see portrayed in advertisements are not realistic. We may know that these people represent an almost impossible body type, often due to surgery and eating disorders. We may even know that most model photos in advertisements are altered with computers, and that some bodies in photos are even a combination of different models’ body parts assembled with computer imaging. What we may not know about are the negative psychological effects of being exposed to such images on a daily basis.

Three thousand. This is how many separate advertisements the average American encounters in a single day. We encounter advertisements on soda cans, clothing, television, radio, food dispensers, the Internet, newspapers, cell phones, blimps, even banana stickers. According to “Women and Gender: A Feminist Psychology” by Mary Crawford and Rhoda Unger, advertisements occupy 60 percent of all newspaper space and 52 percent of magazine pages.

Advertisement images are especially notorious for portraying women in unrealistic and sexist ways. Seventy-three percent of all magazine images display women as decorative or sexualized. Women are repeatedly shown as being “checked out by men,” inspecting or touching themselves, flirting, or wearing something revealing. Many ads feature just a part of a woman’s body or show a woman’s body morphing into a product. As far as unrealistic images, only 3 to 5 percent of all American women can achieve the physical appearance of a “real” fashion model, according to Crawford and Unger.

So what happens when women and men are exposed to such unrealistic and sexist images on a daily basis? Numerous studies have shown that repeated exposure to such images may contribute to a broad range of social and psychological problems, including sexist attitudes and beliefs, sexual harassment, violence against women, eating disorders and stereotyped perceptions of and behavior towards men and women.

One such study conducted in 1996 by the Personality And Social Psychology Bulletin revealed that women exposed to sexist ads judged their current body size as larger and revealed a larger discrepancy between their actual and ideal body sizes (preferring a thinner body) than women exposed to the nonsexist or no ad condition. In the same study, men exposed to the sexist ads judged their current body size as thinner, revealed a larger discrepancy between their actual and ideal body size (preferring a larger body), and revealed a larger discrepancy between their own ideal body size and their perceptions of other’s male body size preferences (believing that others preferred a larger ideal).

Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to be immune to these negative effects without completely removing the presence of these advertisements. Even people such as feminists, who are more likely than those with traditional attitudes to recognize and reject sexist material, are not immune to advertising’s subtle effects. Research done in “Women and Gender: A Feminist Psychology” shows that self esteem lowers in the presence of these images, even when the participants know about its adverse effects.

Crawford and Unger provide us with these facts:

Twenty-nine: the average weekly number of hours Americans spend watching television. Fifty-nine percent: the amount of kids between 4 and 6 who have a television in their room. Eighty-one percent: the amount of 10-year-olds who are afraid of being fat. Forty-two percent: the amount of first to third grade girls who want to be thinner. Nine percent: the amount of 9-year-olds who have vomited to lose weight. Ten percent: the amount of women with anorexia nervosa who die due to anorexia-related causes.

Unrealistic advertisements are not benign. Know this: YOU are beautiful, no matter what the media images try to tell you.