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As people watch more television, they prefer thinner female body, said a new study. The researchers claim that they have found a direct link between ideal female body idea and TV. They were able to separate the media exposure effects from other ecological and cultural factors.

For the purpose of study, scientists assessed a group of people from rural Nicaragua, as they grouped them into their levels of access to the Western media. This included people who lived in the urban areas, people from a village access to television and a village with people who had limited access to TV, as per iTV.com

As per the study findings, the highest BMI preferences were in the village that had least access to media and the ones who lived in urban locales preferred to have thinner female bodies.

Dr Martin Tovee, co-leader of the study from the University of Newcastle's Institute of Neuroscience said, "Our study shows that television is having a significant impact on what people think is the ideal woman's body.

"Nicaragua provides a unique opportunity to study media effects as we were able to minimise variance in potential confounding factors and focus on the influence of visual media.

"The differences in television access allowed us to explore how media exposure affects the size and shape women aspire to be.

"Findings revealed that the more television exposure people receive, the thinner a female body women and men prefer - the amount of media access directly predicts body ideals.

"Overall these results strongly implicate television access in establishing risk factors for body image dissatisfaction."

The study, published in the British Journal of Psychology, was conducted in two remote villages off Pearl Lagoon Basin in Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua, as reported by BT.com