Transforming Women's Body Image

No abstract available for this article.     

Body Composition Changes in Menopausal Women

No abstract available for this article.     

Gender Differences in Body Image Are Increasing

It has been speculated that the prevalence of eating disorders in women has risen because of increases in women's body dissatisfaction. We conducted a meta-analysis of gender differences in attractiveness and body image using 222 studies from the past 50 years. The analysis shows dramatic increases in the numbers of women among individuals who have poor body image. Moreover, these trends were found across multiple conceptualizations of body image, including self-judgments of physical attractiveness.     

Virtually Perfect: Image Retouching and Adolescent Body Image

Most studies of ideal-body media effects on body image focus on the extreme thinness of the models, not their idealness. In modern media, this idealness is often created or maximized via digital image editing. This experiment tested the effects of image editing outside the research-typical context of exclusive thinness. Original unretouched photographs were manipulated by a professional retoucher to produce unretouched and retouched image conditions. In a third condition (retouched-aware), the retouched images were explicitly labeled as retouched. Adolescents ( N = 393, average age 15.43) were randomly assigned to one of these conditions or a no-exposure control, and they completed a questionnaire following exposure. Objectified body consciousness increased and physical self-esteem decreased among male and female adolescents in the retouched-aware condition only. This boomerang effect of retouching awareness is explored in the discussion.     

Experimental Evidence that Theistic-Religious Body Affirmations Improve Women's Body Image

We examined in a random-assignment, pretest-posttest design whether college women's body image would improve after reading religious and spiritual affirmations about their bodies. The sample was predominantly white and Christian. In a pretest, women completed measures of religiosity and body esteem (how they felt about their weight and appearance) and were then assigned via matched random assignment to three different groups for a treatment and posttest one week later. In the Religious group, women read affirmations with a theistic and Christian-based tone that emphasized God's love and acceptance of their bodies; in the Spiritual group, women read body affirmations with a more positive secular tone and no mention of God; Control group women read random statements about campus issues. After reading the affirmations, women then viewed photos of "thin ideal" fashion models to activate body image concerns. Women next completed the posttest body esteem measures. Women in the Religious group increased significantly compared to Control women (who declined) in how they felt about their appearance and looks. Women in the Spiritual condition improved marginally compared to the Control condition.     

The Body Grid as an Assessment Tool for Body Image

The aim of this study was to analyze the body grid (BG) as an assessment tool for body image in a sample of patients with breast cancer, after surgery. We explored two measures of cognitive structure, percentage of variance accounted for by the first factor (PVAFF) and polarization, and we compared measures of body image and body self-esteem obtained by means of the BG with those obtained via a validated body image questionnaire. Our sample was composed of 23 patients (12 subjected to radical mastectomy, 11 subjected to conserving surgery) and 24 healthy controls. Participants were administered the BG and the Multidimensional Body Self Relations Questionnaire (MBSRQ). We analyzed the similarities between instruments using correlations and nonparametric tests. We have also provided two case studies to exemplify the use of the BG.

?We found statistical differences in cognitive structure between patients and healthy controls. There were no differences between women subjected to mastectomy and women with breast conserving surgery in the level of PVAFF, but there were significant differences between them in the level of polarization. We found significant correlations between body image indices of both instruments, especially self-evaluated attractiveness (MBSRQ) and distance between real and ideal body (BG). We found similar distributions of these indices in all of the samples. We concluded that the BG provides useful information about body image. The results show that both instruments assess similar constructs. This suggests that the BG is a valid instrument for body image assessment.     

Towards a Comprehensive Understanding of Body Image: Integrating Positive Body Image,Embodiment and Self-Compassion

Body image (BI) disturbance is a relevant factor in the etiology and treatment of eating disorders (ED). Although progress has been made in recent decades in understanding BI and its relationship with ED, the efficacy of BI disturbance prevention and intervention programs is still limited. In order to reach deeper understanding of BI disturbance and clarify the interactions between some protective and risk factors related to this construct, we carried out a literature review on some specific BI-related factors that so far have been analyzed independently. We specifically examined positive and negative BI; embodiment and its role in the development of positive and negative BI; and self-compassion as a protective factor that promotes positive embodiment (vs. disembodiment) and protection against body shame. We conclude that integrating the available evidence on these factors into BI models may be used to enhance our understanding of BI and improve the efficacy of prevention and intervention programs to help fight negative BI (by reducing body shame and disembodiment) and promote positive BI (by increasing self-compassion and positive embodiment).     

Body Image and Day-to-Day Social Interaction

Participants maintained a social interaction diary and completed a measure of body image. Body image was found to have three factors, body attractiveness, social attractiveness (how attractive people believed others found them to be), and general attractiveness. For both men and women, self-perceptions of body attractiveness and of social attractiveness were positively related to the intimacy they found in interaction. Self-perceptions of social attractiveness were positively related to women's confidence in social interaction and their perceived influence over interaction, whereas for men, confidence and influence were unrelated to social attractiveness. For both men and women, body image was unrelated to how enjoyable people found interactions to be and was weakly related to how responsive they felt others were to them. For both men and women, body image was also unrelated to how socially active people were and to the relative distribution of same- and opposite-sex interactions.     

Sex Differences in the Orientation of Body Image

This study examined Erikson's formulation of contrasting psychosexual modes in males and females through the configuration used in the drawing of a tree. It is suggested that an open configuration in the drawing of the foliage expresses the projection of body image in an intrusive mode, while a closed configuration expresses an inclusive mode. In a general sample, males drew open trees while females tended to draw closed trees. A second sample of Ss was preselected for the strong presence or absence of intrusive characteristics, and their results used as a validity test of the inference made from the configuration of the tree. In this sample, intrusively-oriented Ss drew open trees, irrespective of sex, while the nonintrusively-oriented Ss performance was similar to the general sample.     

Body Image in Adulthood: A Projective Approach

A sample of 210 persons varying by age (young adults, middle-aged, older adults), gender, and relationship status (single or involved) were administered the Holtzman Inkblot Technique (HIT) and Geriatric Draw-A-Person (G–DAP) to ascertain projectively assessed aspects of body image in adulthood. Results suggested that both the HIT and G–DAP were sensitive to the effects of age and gender, wherein young adults scored higher on both HIT Barrier and Penetration than both middle-aged or older adults. In addition, G–DAP scorns favored young adults. Hilt Penetration scores varied by both age and relationship status.