Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2025
The Muscle Silhouette Measure (MSM) and Fat Silhouette Measure (FSM) are pictorial scales that assess perceptions of male body image (Frederick et al., 2007). They each contain eight images, with the MSM progressing from non-muscular to very muscular, and the FSM very low body fat to very high body fat. Consistent with self-discrepancy theory (Higgins, 1987), these measures assess men’s perceptions of their current bodies and their ideal bodies, and the discrepancy between these perceptions. It has also been used to assess women’s perceptions of the most attractive male body type and to code representations of muscularity level in popular magazines. The MSM and FSM can be administered to adolescents and/or adults and is free to use. This chapter describes the development and psychometrics of the MSM and FSM. The images were drawn by an artist based on photos of men in the Atlas of Men (Sheldon et al., 1954). Test-retest reliability was high for reports of current and ideal body. It was high for the MSM and moderate for the FSM for the self-ideal discrepancy. The chapter provides the images, response scale, and scoring procedure. Logistics of use, such as permissions, copyright, and contact information, are provided for readers.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.