Cartoon Characters in Children’s Series: Gender Disparities in Body Weight and Food Consumption

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The essay is relevant and interesting, and it would be desirable that the authors went on investigating the potential impact that the projection of idealized slim bodies of the cartoon heroines may have on the perceptions on body images of girls in particular, since they generally seem more vulnerable to suffering eating disorders than boys.

The essay is very well structured, provides adequate descriptions of its methodology and key terms of analysis and uses a sufficient corpus of study. Further emphasis on the impact of idealized visual images on girls and female teenagers would be desirable, although that could be the topic for another piece of research.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for your positive feedback. Notwithstanding the fact that it would be relevant to look into the possible impact of media representations on girls’ body image, this was not among the aims of the present study. We will certainly consider your well-aimed suggestion in our future work.

Reviewer 2 Report

I have really enjoyed reading this article, I find it very original and novel.

This article is very well presented, has a very complete introduction and a methodology where no details have been forgotten. The results are presented correctly and the discussion is complete and includes comparison with other articles. In the bibliography I do not detect faults. In general it is an article, in my opinion that it should be accepted without modifications.

Congratulations

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

thank you for your positive feedback.

Reviewer 3 Report

• Only one general objective is indicated in the introduction; secondary or partial objectives should be indicated. It would also be interesting to indicate which are the hypotheses of the authors regarding the results, based on the literature consulted, especially when later in the results information of confirmation or rejection of hypotheses is given.
• - The methodology would lack information on: * Where the audience rating was obtained to choose the ten most viewed series. * Explain better why an Australian food standard is chosen for a European population. * It would be very appropriate to include a figure with a reproduction of two or three characters and a body status assessment given by the evaluators, to check its accuracy. Especially including a non-human character, like a sponge. * It would be convenient to indicate some statistical analysis regarding the agreement between evaluators, and the reliability of their evaluations.
• - In the discussion I miss a more detailed analysis of the limitations of the study, as well as a further development of the practical implications and recommendations that the authors make based on their findings.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for all your remarks and suggestions. All sections added or modified in the article are included in introduction, methods, and discussion part. We do hope that the following documentation will clarify all remaining concerns.

• We have rewritten the last paragraph (lines 71-78) of the introduction to set out the main objective and the goals of the study clearly.
• We used Average Minute Rating (AMR %) as a basis to select the 10-comic series with highest TV audience viewing. We added the above information in Methods. We added two sentences discussing the audience rating obtained in order to choose the most popular series (lines 83-87).

2. The classification of foods into core and non-core has been previously adopted by researchers who analyzed children’s intake in the UK (Toumpakari et al., 2015) and was thus selected by our team as a suitable method for approaching eating habits of the cartoon characters in children’s series in a meaningful manner. We added this information in methods (lines 100-103).
3. The inclusion of a figure depicting the cartoon characters was proven to be a complicated process due to the copyright permissions needed. Therefore, we cannot adopt your insightful suggestion. However, we provide a thorough documentation in the methods section about the classifications of characters’ body-weight status (lines 124-127).
4. Researchers measured the validity of the rating and the degree of agreement (interrater reliability) among the raters using the k-coefficient. The clarification has been added (lines 131-134).

• We have added a passage which describes the limitations of the study clearly (lines 307-308). Furthermore, practical implications have been added in the last paragraph of the discussion (lines 318-324).

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments to Authors 

            This study showed that females seem to be underrepresented in cartoon series but receive the majority of the comments related to physical appearance, with most of them addressing the attractiveness of a thin figure.

           Authors are kindly requested to emphasize the current concepts about these issues in the context of recent knowledge and the available literature. This articles should be quoted in the References list. In addition, figures and tables should be made readable.

References

1. Nothing alien about it: A comparison of weight bias in preschool-aged children's ratings of non-human cartoons and human figures. Obes Res Clin Pract. 2019; 13 (5): 435-439. doi:10.1016/j.orcp.2019.09.002.
2. Television advertisements for high-sugar foods and beverages: effect on children's snack food intake [published online ahead of print, 2020 Aug 4]. Br J Nutr. 2020; 1-7. doi:10.1017/S0007114520003116.
3. Experts, peers, or celebrities? The role of different social endorsers on children's fruit choice. Appetite. 2020; 155: 104821. doi:10.1016/j.appet.2020.104821.
4. Food to politics: Representations of genetically modified organisms in cartoons on the Internet in China [published online ahead of print, 2021 Jan 5]. Public Underst Sci. 2021;963662520983564. doi:10.1177/0963662520983564.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for your suggestions. Most of the articles you proposed are cited in the discussion part and listed in the reference list (lines 227-231 and 318-324 accordingly).

Furthermore, adjustments were made in Tables 1 & 2, in order to better present our results in the relevant section. We do hope that the arguments presented above will clarify all the remaining concerns.