On this page you’ll find:

1. What Is Body Image? Body image facts
2. Body Image and Dieting (including info on dieting during adolescence, dieting impact on eating disorders)
3. Body Image and Mental Health (including impact on psychology, shame, depression, self-worth, attitudes, self-esteem)

1. What Is Body Image? Body image facts

Body image refers to the way we perceive our own bodies and the way we assume other people perceive us. “Body image involves our perception, imagination, emotions, and physical sensations of and about our bodies. It’s not static, but ever-changing; sensitive to changes in mood, environment, and physical experience. It is not based on fact. It is psychological in nature, and much more influenced by self-esteem than by actual physical attractiveness as judged by others. It is not inborn, but learned. This learning occurs in the family and among peers, but these only reinforce what is learned and expected culturally.” [Lightstone, 1999]

• 1. Some general facts about body image:
     1. The average size of the idealized woman (as portrayed by models), has stabilized at 13-19% below healthy weight. [Garner et al., 1980]
     2. The thin ideal is unachievable for most women and is likely to lead to feelings of self-devaluation, dysphoria (depression), and helplessness. [Rodin et al., 1984]
     3. 89% of women in a study of 3,452 women wanted to lose weight. [Garner, 1997]
     4. Constant dieting and the relentless pursuit of thinness has become a normative (thought to be normal) behavior among women in Western society. [Rodin et al., 1984]
     5. Thinness has not only come to represent attractiveness, but also has come to symbolize success, self-control, and higher socioeconomic status. [Forehand, 2001]
     6. The weight-loss industry brings in at least $55.4 billion in revenue per year. [Marketdata Enterprises, 2007]
     7. A disturbed body image is a significant component of eating disorders and plays an important role in the development and continuation of eating disorders. [Stice, 2002]

     
     

• Body Image and Dieting

  When women and girls experience poor body image, they often turn to dieting as a solution. There are numerous studies that cite the psychological connection between poor body image and dieting, and some studies are being published that detail the physical effects of dieting. In order to understand dieting and weight loss, it is important to have a good grasp of the possible mindset or intentions around it as well as the types of behaviors involved.

  
  

1. For a summary of the effects of dieting on eating disorders, see the article “Does Dieting Increase the Risk for Obesity and Eating Disorders?” in the 2006 edition of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.[Spear, 2006]
   1. Dieting During Adolescence
      1. Dieting is a common practice among adolescents, especially girls.
      2. In a survey of adolescents in grades 9 through 12 (approximately ages 14-18), more than 59% of females and 29% of males were trying to lose weight. Over 18% of girls and 8% of boys had gone without food for 24 hours or more to lose weight in the last 30 days. Of the girls, 11.3% had used diet pills and 8.4% had vomited or taken laxatives to lose weight. [Centers for Disease Control, 2004]
      3. 56.2% of teenagers ate less food, fewer calories, or foods low in fat to lose weight or keep from gaining weight; 65.7% exercised to lose weight. [Centers for Disease Control, 2004]
      4. Adolescent girls who engaged in extreme weight-loss behaviors (vomiting and using laxatives or diet pills) were significantly less likely to eat fruits and vegetables compared with non-dieters and dieters using more healthful approaches. [Centers for Disease Control, 2004]
      5. Dieting may compromise healthy growth and cause nutrient deficiencies. Adolescent girls most often diet to improve their appearance, and although this behavior is widespread, teenagers continue to be more overweight than ever before. [Calderon et al., 2004]

      
      

   2. Relationship Between Dieting and Eating Disorders
      1. Eating disorders are 18 times more likely to develop in adolescent girls who dieted at a severe level than in those who did not diet. [Patton et al., 1999]
      2. In one study, an eating disorder was 5 times more likely to develop in teens who dieted at a moderate level than teenagers who did not diet. [Patton et al., 1999]
      3. Two-thirds of new cases of eating disorders arise in female adolescents who have dieted moderately. Eating disorders are largely predicted by higher rates of early dieting. [Patton et al., 1999]
      4. The fact that someone is dieting increases the risk that she or he will overeat or binge to counteract the effects of calorie deprivation. Dieting encourages a shift from a reliance on physiological reasons for eating (feelings of hunger) to psychological control over eating behaviors (a person’s feeling that he or she shouldn’t eat so much, for example). Lowered body satisfaction, appearance satisfaction, and pressure to be thin all increase with an increase in binge eating. [Stice et al., 2002]
      5. Dieting is the most important predictor of new eating disorders. Differences in the incidence of eating disorders between sexes were largely accounted for by the high rates of early dieting in the female subjects.[Patton et al., 1999]

      
      

2. Body Image and Mental Health (including impact on psychology, shame, depression, self-worth, attitudes, self-esteem)

   
   

   In February 2007, The American Psychological Association (APA) released a report, Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls, examining and summarizing the best psychological theory, research, and clinical experience addressing the sexualization of girls via the media and other cultural messages [APA, 2007]. This superb report connects the dots between girls’ psychological health, their behaviors, and media influences. You’ll find many references to those findings below.When women and girls feel bad about their bodies, they often feel bad about themselves. This outcome is what the field of eating-disorders treatment is trying to capture when pointing out the seriousness of poor body image. Yet weight-loss products focus on instilling feelings of body hatred in consumers. See the section on weight-loss marketing for detailed facts.

   1. The thin ideal is unachievable for most women and is likely to lead to feelings of self-devaluation, dysphoria (depression), and helplessness. [Rodin et al., 1984]
   2. Studies also show that self-objectification is associated with negative mental-health outcomes in adolescent girls. In early adolescence, girls who had a more objectified relationship with their bodies were more likely to experience depression and had lower self-esteem. [Ward, 2002]
   3. Among African-American and white adolescent girls, self-objectification is a significant predictor of depression, body shame, and disordered eating, even when controlling for race, grade in school, and body-mass index.[Ward and Rivadeneyra, 1999]
   4. One study exposed undergraduate women to 40 full-page photographs from Cosmopolitan, Vogue, and Glamour magazines. Young women exposed to images of idealized models indicated more eating-disorder symptoms than women in the control group, as well as more negative mood states and lower self-esteem. [Zurbriggen and Morgan, 2006]
   5. Attitudes
      1. Girls and young women who more frequently consume or engage with mainstream media content also support the sexual stereotypes that paint women as sexual objects. [Ward, 2002;Ward and Rivadeneyra, 1999;Zurbriggen and Morgan, 2006]
      2. Media exposure has been found to constrain young women’s conceptions of femininity by putting appearance and physical attractiveness at the center of women’s values.
         1. Frequent viewing of reality TV programming among young women is associated with a stronger belief in the importance of appearance. [Tolman et al., 2006]
         2. When they were asked to rate the importance of particular qualities for women, white and African-American high school students who consumed more mainstream media attributed greater importance to sexiness and beauty than did students who consumed less media. [Ward, 2004;Ward and Averitt, 2005]
   6. Self-esteem
      In psychology, self-esteem (also called self-worth, self-confidence, and self-respect) reflects a person’s overall self-appraisal of their worth. According to the Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls (2007), low self-esteem is associated with health-compromising behaviors in adolescence, such as substance use, early sexual activity, eating problems, and suicidal ideation. Surprisingly, there is little longitudinal research addressing this issue. Just at the time when girls begin to develop their identities, they are more likely to suffer losses in self-esteem.
      1. In the eighth grade, girls who objectify their bodies more have much lower self-esteem. For this reason, diminishing self-esteem arising in early adolescence may make girls particularly vulnerable to cultural messages that promise them popularity, effectiveness, and social acceptance through the right “sexy” look. On the other hand, the drop in self-esteem may be a result of how responsive they are to these cultural messages. [McGeer and Williams, 2000]
      2. In one study, white and African-American girls (ages 10 to 17 years) threw a softball as hard as they could against a distant gymnasium wall. The researchers found that the extent to which girls viewed their bodies as objects and were concerned about their bodies’ appearance predicted poorer motor performance on the softball throw. Self-objectification, it appears, limits the form and effectiveness of girls’ physical movements. [Van den Berg et al., 2007]
      3. Perhaps the most insidious consequence of self-objectification is that it breaks down one’s thinking process. Ongoing attention to physical appearance leaves fewer resources available for other mental and physical activities.
      4. While college students who were alone in a dressing room were asked to try on and evaluate either a swimsuit or a sweater. While they waited for 10 minutes wearing the garment, they completed a math test. The young women in swimsuits performed significantly worse on the math problems than did those wearing sweaters. No differences were found for young men. In other words, thinking about the body and comparing it to sexualized cultural ideals disrupted mental capacity in young women. [Fredrickson et. al., 1998]
         1. This impairment also occurs among African-American, Latina, and Asian-American young women. [Hebl et al., 2004].
         2. This impairment extends beyond mathematics to other cognitive domains, including logical reasoning and spatial skills. [Gapinski et al., 2003]
   7. Low self-esteem is often associated with health-compromising behaviors in adolescence such as substance use, early sexual activity, eating problems, and thoughts that may lead to suicide. Surprisingly, there is little longitudinal research addressing this issue. [APA, 2007]
   8. One longitudinal study examines the predictive association between self-esteem in young New Zealanders ages 9 to 13 years and a variety of health compromising behaviors at age 15. Low levels of self-esteem significantly predicted adolescent reports of problem eating, suicidal ideation, and multiple health-compromising behaviors. [McGeer and Williams, 2000]

These facts were compiled by Marcella Raimondo, MPH