Body image - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Body image refers to a person's perception of the aesthetics

Aesthetics

Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...

and sexual attractiveness of their own body. The phrase body image was first coined by the Austrian neurologist and psychoanalyst Paul Schilder in his masterpiece The Image and Appearance of the Human Body (1935). Human society has at all times placed great value on beauty of the human body, but a person's perception of their own body may not correspond to society's standards.

The concept of body image is used in numerous disciplines, including psychology, medicine, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, philosophy and cultural and feminist studies. The term is also often used in the media. Across these disciplines and media there is no consensus definition.

A person's body image is thought to be, in part, a product of their personal experiences, personality, and various social and cultural forces. A person's sense of their own physical appearance, usually in relation to others or in relation to some cultural "ideal," can shape their body image. A person's perception of their appearance can be different from how others actually perceive them.

A 2007 report by the American Psychological Association

American Psychological Association

The American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States. It is the world's largest association of psychologists with around 154,000 members including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. The APA...

found that a culture-wide sexualization

Sexualization

The definition of the term, Sexualization has been the subject of debate and dispute. It has been described as the act or process of sexualizing. It refers to the making of a person, group or thing to be seen as sexual in nature or a person to become aware of sexuality...

of girls (and women) was contributing to increased female anxiety associated with body image. Similar findings associated with body image were found by an Australian government Senate Standing Committee

Australian Senate committees

This article is about committees of the Senate. For consideration of bills 'in committee', see Committee of the WholeThe committees of the Australian Senate are committees of Senators, established by the Australian Senate, for purposes determined by that body...

report on the sexualization of children in the media. However, other scholars have expressed concern that these claims are not based on solid data.

Studies conclude that women are more worried about their body image than men and that their concern can impact on their health. Commentators note that people who have a low body image will try to alter their body in some way, such as by dieting or undergoing cosmetic surgery.

Overview

French child psychoanalyst

Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...

, Francoise Dolto

Françoise Dolto

Françoise Dolto , was a French doctor and psychoanalyst, famous for her research on babies and childhood. Dolto revolutionized the field of psycho-therapeutic work with babies and with the mother baby dyad....

, has developed a theory of the unconscious body image. Negative perceptions by a person regarding their body, such as a perception that they are fat, can in some cases lead to mental disorders such as depression

Clinical depression

Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and by loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities...

or eating disorders such as bulimia nervosa

Bulimia nervosa

Bulimia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by binge eating and purging or consuming a large amount of food in a short amount of time, followed by an attempt to rid oneself of the food consumed, usually by purging and/or by laxative, diuretics or excessive exercise. Bulimia nervosa is...

, though there can be a variety of different reasons why these disorders can occur.

There has recently been a debate within the media industry focusing on the potentially negative impact size zero

Size Zero

Size 0 is a women's clothing size in the US catalog sizes system. Size 0 and 00 were invented due to the changing of clothing sizes over time , which has caused the adoption of lower numbers...

models can have on young people's body image. It has been suggested that size zero models be banned from cat walks, with many celebrities being targeted by the media due to their often drastic weight loss and slender frames; for example, Nicole Richie

Nicole Richie

Nicole Camille Richie is an American fashion designer, author, actress, singer and television personality. Her father was Peter Michael Escovedo, a musician who played for a brief time with Lionel Richie, and her mother Karen was the executive assistant for Sheila Escovedo...

and British Super Model Kate Moss

Kate Moss

Kate Moss is an English model. Moss is known for her waifish figure and popularising the heroin chic look in the 1990s. She is also known for her controversial private life, high profile relationships, party lifestyle, and drug use. Moss changed the look of modelling and started a global debate on...

. Some examples of celebrity woman Victoria Beckham

Victoria Beckham

Victoria Caroline Beckham is an English singer-songwriter, dancer, model, actress, fashion designer and businesswoman. In the late 1990s, Beckham rose to fame with the all-female pop group Spice Girls and was dubbed Posh Spice by the July 1996 issue of the British pop music magazine Top of the Pops...

, regretted in a similar fashion can be found, but the media seem to focus principally on the effect that the Size Zero phenomenon has on young women. Media however, is generally quick to denounce celebrities endorsing fad diets, including popstars who describe girls who are not under a peer pressurized

Peer pressure

Peer pressure refers to the influence exerted by a peer group in encouraging a person to change his or her attitudes, values, or behavior in order to conform to group norms. Social groups affected include membership groups, when the individual is "formally" a member , or a social clique...

size, a "social suicide".

Men's body image is a topic of increasing interest in both academic articles and in the popular press. Current research indicates many men wish to become more muscular than they currently perceive themselves to be, often desiring up to 26 pounds of additional muscle mass. According to the study, western men desire muscle mass over that of Asian men by as much as 30 pounds. The desire for additional muscle has been linked to many men's concepts about masculinity

Masculinity

Masculinity is possessing qualities or characteristics considered typical of or appropriate to a man. The term can be used to describe any human, animal or object that has the quality of being masculine...

. A variety of research has indicated a relationship between men's endorsement of traditionally masculine ideas and characteristics, and his desire for additional muscle. Some research has suggested this relationship between muscle and masculinity may begin early in life, as boys' action figures are often depicted as super-muscular, often beyond the actual limits of human physiology.

Studies have found that females tend to think more about their body shape and endorse thinner figures than men even into old age. When female undergraduates were exposed to depictions of thin women their body satisfaction decreased, but rose when exposed to larger models.

Physical appearance comparison processes appear to play a critical role in the link between fashion media exposure and body image dissatisfaction. And it appears that upwards physical appearance comparisons against idealised images leads to greater dissatisfaction, but downward comparisons, for example against obese people, are associated with better body image satisfaction.

Measurement

Body image is often measured by asking the 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.

Monteath and McCabe found that 44% of women express negative feelings about both individual body parts and their bodies as a whole. Psychology Today
Psychology Today
Psychology Today is a bi-monthly magazine published in the United States. It is a psychology-based magazine about relationships, health, and related topics written for a mass audience of non-psychologists. Psychology Today was founded in 1967 and features articles on such topics as love,...

found that 56% of the women and about 40% of the men who responded to their survey in 1997 were dissatisfied with their overall appearance.

Body image and weight

The desire to lose weight is highly correlated with poor body image, with more women than men wanting to lose weight. Kashubeck-West et al. reported that when considering only men and women who desire to lose weight, sex differences in body image disappear.

These figures do not, however, distinguish between people at a low or healthy weight and those who are in fact overweight, i.e., between those whose self-perception as overweight is incorrect and those whose perception of 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 body 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 outweighed by that 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.

Media impact on body image

Some girls and young women compare themselves to models in ads, in terms of their physical attractiveness

Physical attractiveness

Physical attractiveness refers to a person's physical traits which are perceived to be aesthetically pleasing or beautiful. The term often implies sexual attractiveness or desirability, but can also be distinct from the two; for example, humans may regard the young as attractive for various...

. Many commentators regard the emphasis in the media and in the fashion

Fashion

Fashion, a general term for a currently popular style or practice, especially in clothing, foot wear, or accessories. Fashion references to anything that is the current trend in look and dress up of a person...

industry on thinness and on an ideal female body shape

Female body shape

Female body shape or figure is the cumulative product of a woman's skeletal structure and the quantity and distribution of muscle and fat on the body. There are, and have been, wide differences on what should be considered an ideal or preferred body shape, both for attractiveness and for health...

and size as being psychologically detrimental to the well-being of many young women, and on their self-image which also gives rise to excessive dieting

Dieting

Dieting is the practice of eating food in a regulated fashion to achieve or maintain a controlled weight. In most cases dieting is used in combination with physical exercise to lose weight in those who are overweight or obese. Some athletes, however, follow a diet to gain weight...

and/or exercise, and to eating disorder

Eating disorder

Eating disorders refer to a group of conditions defined by abnormal eating habits that may involve either insufficient or excessive food intake to the detriment of an individual's physical and mental health. Bulimia nervosa, anorexia nervosa, and binge eating disorder are the most common specific...

s such as anorexia nervosa

Anorexia nervosa

Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by refusal to maintain a healthy body weight and an obsessive fear of gaining weight. Although commonly called "anorexia", that term on its own denotes any symptomatic loss of appetite and is not strictly accurate...

. Sociocultural studies highlight the role of cultural factors in the incidence of anorexia nervosa in women, such as the promotion of thinness as the ideal female form in Western industrialized nations, particularly through the media. A recent epidemiological study of 989,871 Swedish residents indicated that gender

Gender

Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...

, ethnicity and socio-economic status were highly correlated with the chance of developing anorexia nervosa, and women with non-European parents were among the least likely to be diagnosed, while women in wealthy, ethnic Swedish families were most at risk.

A study by Garner and Garfinkel demonstrated that those in professions where there is a particular social pressure to be thin (such as models

Model (person)

A model , sometimes called a mannequin, is a person who is employed to display, advertise and promote commercial products or to serve as a subject of works of art....

and dancers) were much more likely to develop anorexia during their career, and further research suggests that those with anorexia have much higher contact with cultural sources that promote weight-loss.

Although anorexia nervosa is usually associated with Western cultures, exposure to Western media is thought to have led to an increase in cases in non-Western countries. But other cultures may not display the same worries about becoming fat as those in the West, and instead may emphasise other common features.

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. It also argues that one must be careful about making the leap from arguing that certain environmental conditions might cause body dissatisfaction to the claim that those conditions can cause diagnosable eating disorders, especially severe eating disorders like Anorexia Nervosa.

Sources

Blakeslee, S. "Out-of-Body Experience? Your Brain is to Blame." New York Times, October 3, 2006.
Debra L. Gimlin, Body Work: Beauty and Self Image in American Culture (University of California Press, 2002) ISBN 0520228561
Grogan, Sarah. Body Image: Understanding Body Dissatisfaction in Men, Women, and Children.
Melzack, R. “Phantom Limbs.” Scientific American, Secret of the Senses. 2006: 53-59.
Ramachandran, V.S.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Vilayanur Subramanian "Rama" Ramachandran, born 1951, is a neuroscientist known for his work in the fields of behavioral neurology and visual psychophysics...

A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness. New York: Pearson Education, 2004.
Sacks, Oliver. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985.
Sherrington, C. S. The Integrated Action of the Nervous System. C Scribner's Sons, 1906.

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Overview

Measurement

Body image and weight

Media impact on body image

See also

Sources