Body image is a person's thoughts, feelings and perception of the aesthetics or sexual attractiveness of their own body. The concept of body image is used in a number of disciplines, including neuroscience, psychology, medicine, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, philosophy, cultural and feminist studies; the media also often uses the term. +more
Body image can be negative ("body negativity") or positive ("body positivity"). A person with a negative body image may feel self-conscious or ashamed, and may feel that others are more attractive. +more
Aside from having low self-esteem, sufferers typically fixate on altering their physical appearances. Such behavior creates body dissatisfaction and higher risks of eating disorders, isolation, and mental illnesses in the long term. +more
Many factors contribute to a person's body image, including family dynamics, mental illness, biological predispositions and environmental causes for obesity or malnutrition, and cultural expectations (e. g. +more
A 2007 report by the American Psychological Association found that a culture-wide sexualization of girls and women was contributing to increased female anxiety associated with body image. An Australian government Senate Standing Committee report on the sexualization of children in the media reported similar findings associated with body image. +more
History
In Ancient Egypt, the perfect woman was said to have a slender figure, with narrow shoulders, and a tall waist. Ancient Greece focused more on the male figure, but its female ideal was full-figured and plump with fair skin tones. +more
During the Italian Renaissance, a wife's appearance was taken as an important reflection of her husband's status; size was linked to wealth, and so the ideal wife was held to have full hips and an ample bosom. The Victorian Era witnessed a similar movement, but the popularity of the waist-cinching corset led to the desirability of the hourglass figure. +more
After World War I, the Gibson Girl transformed into the Flapper, an ideal type which dominated the period of the "Roaring Twenties". Women transitioned towards androgynous looks, in which hair styles were kept short, and brassieres were worn to flatten the chest. +more
Dress sense became more casual as well, perhaps reflecting a postwar relaxation of social and political tension, and a reaction against the matronly image of the women behind the alcohol Prohibition movement in the USA. With advertisements increasingly advocating the need to achieve a thinner frame, many women therefore pursued diets and exercise. +more
Austrian neurologist and psychoanalyst Paul Schilder coined the phrase 'body-image' in his book The Image and Appearance of the Human Body (1935).
The 1930s and 1940s witnessed the devastating effects of the second World War. While men were out on the battlefield, females began entering the workforce. +more
Since this era was part of the golden age of Hollywood, many celebrities continued to influence this trend by wearing tight-fitting clothing that emphasized their figures. Pin-up girls and sex symbols radiating glamour soon followed in the 1950s, and the proportions of the hourglass figure expanded. +more
Depictions of the perfect woman slowly grew thinner from the 1960s onward. The "Swinging Sixties" saw a similar look to the Flapper with the emergence of high-fashion model Twiggy, who promoted the thin and petite frame, with long slender legs, and an adolescent but androgynous figure. +more
Greater importance was soon placed on fitness. Actress Farrah Fawcett introduced a more toned and athletic body type. +more
In the 1990s, supermodel Kate Moss popularized the stick-thin figure instead. The fashion industry pushed her image further with the 'Heroin chic' look, which dominated the catwalks during that time. +more
As of 2017, efforts to promote a better body image have included an emphasis on fitness and plus-size models in the fashion and media industries. However, the advancement of technologies and pressures from the media have led to even greater importance being placed on the way we look as an indication of our personal value.
Advancements in communication technology have resulted in a "platform of delivery in which we intercept and interpret messages about ourselves, our self-worth, and our bodies. " Social media in particular has reshaped the "perfect body". +more
According to a study by Dove, only 4% of women thought they were beautiful, while approximately 70% of women and girls in the UK believed the media's portrayal of impractical beauty standards fueled their appearance anxieties. As a result, the U. +more
Demographics
Women
"Social currency for girls and women continues to be rooted in physical appearance". Women "all over the world are evaluated and oppressed by their appearances", including their ages, skin tones, or sizes.
Many advertisements promote insecurities in their audiences in order to sell them solutions, and so may present retouched images, sexual objectification, and explicit messages that promote "unrealistic images of beauty" and undermine body image, particularly in female audiences.
Body dissatisfaction creates negative attitudes, a damaging mentality, and negative habits in young women.
The emphasis on an ideal female body shape and size is especially psychologically detrimental to young women, who may resort to grooming, dieting, and surgery in order to be happy. A negative body image is very common among young adult women. +more
Global eating disorder rates such as anorexia and bulimia are gradually rising in adolescent girls. The National Eating Disorders Association, reported that 95% of individuals who suffer from an eating disorder are aged 12 to 26, and anorexia is the third-most-common illness among teenagers. +more
The pressure on women and girls "to cope with the effects of culturally induced body insecurity" is severe, with many reporting that "their lives would be better if they were not judged by their looks and body shape, [as] this is leading to low self-esteem, eating disorders, mental health problems and depression."
"Cultural messages about beauty (i.e. what it is, how it should be cultivated, and how it will be rewarded) are often implicitly conveyed through media representations of women."
Women who compare themselves to images in the media believe they are more overweight than they actually are. One reason for this is because "idealised media images are routinely subjected to computer manipulation techniques, such as airbrushing (e. +more
However, other researchers have contested the claims of the media effects paradigm. An article by Christopher Ferguson, Benjamin Winegard, and Bo Winegard, for example, argues that peer effects are much more likely to cause body dissatisfaction than media effects, and that media effects have been overemphasized. +more
When female undergraduates were exposed to depictions of thin women their body satisfaction decreased; when they were exposed to larger models, it rose. Many women engage in "fat talk" (speaking negatively about the weight-related size/shape of one's body), a behavior that has been associated with weight dissatisfaction, body surveillance, and body shame. +more
Monteath and McCabe found that 44% of women express negative feelings about both individual body parts and their bodies as a whole. 37. +more
In America, the dieting industry earns roughly 40 billion dollars per year. A Harvard study (Fat Talk, Harvard University Press) published in 2000 revealed that 86% of teenage girls are on a diet or believe they should be on one. +more
Men
Similarly, media depictions idealizing a muscular physique have led to body dissatisfaction among young men. As many as 45% of teenage boys may suffer from Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), a mental illness whereby an individual compulsively focuses on self-perceived bodily flaws. +more
18% of adolescent males were most worried about their weights and physiques (Malcore, 2016); 29% frequently thought about their appearances.; 50% had recently complained about the way they looked.
25% of males report having been teased about their weight, while 33% specify social media as the source for self-consciousness. Following celebrities on social media sites makes it possible to interact personally with celebrities, which has been shown to influence male body image. +more
The ideal male body is perceived to feature a narrow waist and hips, broad shoulders, a well-developed upper body, [and] toned "six-pack" abs. The figure may be traced back to an idealized male doll, +more
53% of boys cited advertisements as a "major source of pressure to look good; [though] social media (57%) and friends (68%) exerted more influence, while celebrities (49%) were slightly less persuasive". In spite of this, 22% of adolescent boys thought that the ideals depicted by the media were aspirational, while 33% called them healthy.
Many teenage boys participate in extreme workouts and weight training, and may abuse supplements and steroids to further increase muscle mass. In 2016, 10. +more
Men often desire up to 26 pounds of additional muscle mass. Men who endorse traditional masculine ideas are more likely to desire additional muscle. +more
Men with lower, more feminine waist-hip ratios (WHR) feel less comfortable and self-report lower body esteem and self-efficacy than men with higher, more masculine, WHRs.
Gender differences
Although body dissatisfaction is more common in women, men are becoming increasingly negatively affected. In a longitudinal study that assessed body image across time and age between men and women, men placed greater significance on their physical appearances than women, even though women reported body image dissatisfaction more often. +more
Studies suggest that the significance placed upon body image improved among women as they got older; men in comparison showed little variation in their attitude. Another suggested that "relative to men, women are considerably more psychologically aware of their appearances. +more
As men and women reach older age, body image takes on a different meaning. Research studies show that the importance attached to physical appearance decreases with age.
Weight
The desire to lose weight is highly correlated with poor body image. Kashubeck-West et al. +more
In her book The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf reported that "thirty-three thousand women told American researchers they would rather lose ten to fifteen pounds than achieve any other goal. " Through repeated images of excessively thin women in media, advertisement, and modeling, thinness has become associated with not only beauty, but happiness and success. +more
Research by Martin and Xavier (2010) shows that people feel more pressure from society to be thin after viewing ads featuring a slim model. Ads featuring a larger sized model resulted in less pressure to be thin. +more
Many, like journalist Marisa Meltzer, have argued this contemporary standard of beauty to be described as anorexic thinness, an unhealthy idea that is not representative of a natural human body: "Never before has the 'perfect' body been at such odds with our true size."
However, these figures do not distinguish between people at a low or healthy weight who are in fact overweight, between those whose self-perception as being overweight is incorrect and those whose perception of being overweight is correct.
Post-1997 studies indicate that around 64% of American adults are overweight, such that if the 56%/40% female/male dissatisfaction rates in the Psychology Today study have held steady since its release, those dissatisfaction rates are if anything disproportionately low: although some individuals continue to believe themselves to be overweight when they are not, those persons are now outnumbered by persons who might be expected to be dissatisfied with their bodies but are not.
In turn, although social pressure to lose weight has adverse effects on some individuals who do not need to lose weight, those adverse effects are arguably outweighed by social pressure's positive effect on the overall population, without which the recent increases in obesity and associated health and social problems (described in both popular and academic parlance as an "obesity epidemic") would be even more severe than they already are.
Overweight children experience not only discrimination but overall body dissatisfaction, low self-esteem, social isolation and depression. Because of the negative stigma, the child may suffer severely from emotional and physical ailments that could persist past childhood into adulthood.
Race
The association of light skin with moral virtue dates back at least to the medieval era, and was reinforced during the Atlantic slave trade. The medieval theory that all races had originated from the white race was an early source of the longstanding association of white bodies and beauty ideals with "normality," and other racial phenotypes as aberrant. +more
A lack of racial diversity in the fashion industry contributes to body image issues among non-white minorities. A 2003 experiment presented 3 photographs of attractive white, black and Asian women to white, black and Asian students. +more
Mexican American women who have been attuned to mainstream US culture reported greater body dissatisfaction and have described their ideal body types to be similar to the white norm. Although ethnicities naturally have different body types, this ideal has led to disordered eating amongst Latinas.
Plastic surgery is popular in Asia as a means of Westernizing facial features; rhinoplasty and blepharoplasty may be employed to make noses and eyelids look more Caucasian.
Skin lightening products are also prevalent even in countries where non-white ethnicities are the majority, and the industry makes billions of dollars every year. In India alone, whitening products make up 45% of the skin care market. +more
In spite of these effects, industries like the fashion industry have not significantly featured women of color (and when they have, the women may have either been significantly "whitewashed" - with digitally lightened skin and hair - or may already have features that are considered "white").
Western men desire as much as 30 pounds more muscle mass than do Asian men.
Sexuality
There is no scientific consensus on how a person's sexuality affects their body image. For example, a 2013 study found that lesbian-identifying women reported less body dissatisfaction than did heterosexual women. +more
A 2005 study found that gay men were more likely than straight men to have body image dissatisfaction, diet more, and were more fearful of becoming fat. There is some evidence to link the sexual objectification of gay males and heterosexual females by men in general as a reason for increased numbers in these groups for eating disorders and stimulants addictions. +more
Causes
The fashion industry
Fashion industry insiders argue that clothes hang better on tall, thin catwalk models, but critics respond that an overemphasis on that body type communicates an unhealthy and unrealistic body image to the public.
Fashion magazines directed at females subtly promote thinness and diet practices, and teenagers heavily rely on them for beauty and fashion advice. Seventeen magazine in particular recorded one of the highest number of articles devoted to appearances; 69% of girls reported that it had influenced their ideal body shapes. +more
According to Dove's Global Beauty And Confidence report, "a total of 71% of women and 67% of girls want to call on the media to do a better job portraying women of diverse physical appearance, age, race, shape and size." In addition, 67% of men now strongly believe that it is unacceptable for brands to use photo manipulation techniques to alter the body image of a model.
In response, the fashion magazine industry has made efforts to include 'real' women, and to reduce or ban the use of airbrushing tools. Likewise, fashion brands and retailers adopt vanity sizing in their assortments to intentionally raise a customer's self-esteem while shopping in stores. +more
Fashion models themselves have experienced negative body image due to industry pressures: 69% were told to tone up, while 62% reported that their agencies had required them to lose weight or change their body shapes. 54% of models revealed that they would be dropped by their agencies if they failed to comply. +more
Attempts to improve
Various jurisdictions have taken steps to protect models and promulgate healthier body image. The UK and US have pursued social education campaigns. +more
France is also working on ensuring retailers specify when an image is airbrushed in magazines, websites, and advertisements, although it is unclear whether consumers are already aware of digital retouching techniques.
Some brands voluntarily promote better body images. Fashion conglomerates Kering and LVMH recently "announced that they will no longer hire models smaller than a U. +more
Plus-size models are slowly emerging in mainstream media, which may improve body image. Prominent plus-size models include Ashley Graham, the face of popular plus-size retailer Lane Bryant, and Iskra Lawrence, a classified role model for lingerie and swimwear retailer Aerie. +more
Models have notably used Instagram as a tool to "encourage self-acceptance, fight back against body-shamers, and post plenty of selfies celebrating their figure". In the U. +more
Fashion photographer Tarik Carroll released a photo series titled the EveryMAN Project to showcase large-framed queer and transgender men of color, with the purpose of "challenging hyper-masculinity and gender norms, while bringing body-positivity to the forefront".
The lack of fashion-forward plus-size clothing in the fashion industry has given rise to the #PlusIsEqual movement. High-street brands such as Forever 21 and +more
Another tactic to promote body positivity has been to protest against photo retouching. In 2014, Aerie's ArieReal campaign promised to display "campaign spreads and brand imagery with stomach rolls, gapless thighs and other perceived flaws that would normally have been edited out of the ads". +more
Social media
Beauty standards are being enforced and shaped by social media. Users are constantly bombarded by notifications, posts, and photos about the lives of others, "sending messages about what we could, should, or would be if we only purchased certain products, made certain choices, or engaged in certain behaviors". +more
A study by the Florida Health Experience found that "87% of women and 65% of men compare their bodies to images they consume on social and traditional media. " They also found that users felt like they got more positive attention towards their body if they altered it in some way. +more
Applications such as Instagram have become a "body-image battleground", while the "selfie" is now the universal lens which individuals use to criticize their bodies and others. Facebook and Snapchat also allow users to receive appearance approvals and community acceptance through the ratio of views, comments, and likes. +more
Many users digitally manipulate the self-portraits they post to social media. According to research by the Renfrew Center Foundation, 50% of men and 70% of 18 to 35-year-old women edited their images before uploading. +more
Reports have also shown that the messages delivered by "fitspiration" websites are sometimes identical to the "thinspiration" or pro-anorexia types. This is evident through "language inducing guilt about weight or the body, and promoted dieting". +more
Unrealistic beauty standards
On the other hand, social media has created unrealistic beauty standards. Many individuals are mentally and physically struggling to keep a healthy mind and body. +more
Attempts to improve
In an attempt to tackle such issues, the UK launched a national campaign called Be Real, after findings showed 76% of secondary school students who learnt about body confidence in class felt more positive about themselves. The goal of this movement was thus to improve body confidence through educational resources provided to schools, and persuading the media, businesses, and the diet industry to endorse different body shapes and sizes instead.
Social media platforms such as Instagram have banned the use of thinspiration and thinspo related hashtags. Other solutions include the promotion of hashtags such as #SelfLove and #BodyPositivity, and the promotion of "transformation photos", side-by-side images displaying an individual's fitness or weight-loss progress, which users have utilized to showcase the deceptiveness of social media. +more
ProjectHEAL introduced a campaign called #WhatMakesMeBeautiful, with the aim of celebrating admirable attributes other than appearance.
There have been recent demands for social media sites to highlight photos that have been edited and prevent universal publication.
Companies in France who want to avoid a fine must label their post if the image has been altered for enhancement.
Measurement
Body image can be measured by asking a subject to rate their current and ideal body shape using a series of depictions. The difference between these two values is the measure of body dissatisfaction.
There are currently more than 40 "instruments" used to measure body image. All of these instruments can be put into three categories: figure preferences, video projection techniques, and questionnaires. +more
Figure rating scales
One of the most prominent measures of body image is Figure Rating Scales, which present a series of body images graded from thin to muscular or from thin to obese. The subject is asked to indicate which figure best represents their current perceived body, and which represents their ideal or desired body. +more
Video projection techniques
One study showed each participant a series of images of himself or herself with either increased weight or decreased weight. Each participant was asked to respond to the pictures, and their startle and eyeblink response were measured. +more
Questionnaires
BASS is a 9-item subscale of the Multidimensional Body-Self Relations Questionnaire. It uses a rating scale from −2 to +2 and assesses eight body areas and attributes and overall appearance (face, hair, lower torso, mid-torso, upper torso, muscle tone, height, and weight).
Questionnaires can have confounding variable responses. For instance, "Acquiescent response style (ARS), or the tendency to agree with items on a survey, is more common among individuals from Asian and African cultures. +more
Body size and shape misperception
As well as being dissatisfied with their body sizes, exposure to idealized images of thin bodies is associated with overestimation of one's own body size. Recent research suggests that this exposure to images of thin bodies may cause a recalibration of the visual perceptual mechanisms that represent body size in the brain, such that the observer sees subsequently-viewed bodies, including their own bodies, as heavier than they really are, a process known as "visual adaptation". +more
Further reading
Blakeslee, S. [url=https://www. +more
[[Category:Body image in popular culture]] [[Category:Body shape]] [[Category:Feminism and sexuality]] [[Category:Feminist theory]] [[Category:Human appearance]] [[Category:Self]] [[Category:Sexualization]]
Body image in popular culture
Feminism and sexuality
Human appearance
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