Christopher Blake's work contributes to a more comprehensive and in-depth understanding of why images of women in the media can influence the body satisfaction of their viewers. To reconstruct the causes of these effects, selected communication science, social psychology, and media psychology approaches are integrated into an explanatory framework based on self-discrepancy theory. This framework allows for a coherent explanation of the seemingly contradictory empirical research findings related to the effects of media body representations on body satisfaction. The explanatory framework is discussed in terms of its contribution to the further development of the research field.