Avatar body dimensions and men's body image.

Two online surveys examined the significance of the visual analogues, or 'avatars', men (total N=266) create and use online. Two-dimensional (adiposity×muscle) somatomorphic matrices revealed that avatars are generally thinner than their creator's actual body and similar to their ideal, but more muscular than either their actual or ideal. Men's ratings of the importance of their avatar's appearance correlated with their actual weight and muscle concerns, and disparity between their avatar and actual body dimensions predicted their offline context body change concerns additional to that accounted for by disparity between their ideal and actual bodies.