Body image
Body image is a multifaceted concept that encompasses how individuals perceive their physical appearance and how that perception influences their feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. While concerns about body image are often highlighted during adolescence, they are relevant throughout a person's life, affecting psychological well-being at all ages. A positive body image can foster confidence, social engagement, and a sense of acceptance, whereas a negative body image may lead to serious issues such as anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and in extreme cases, suicidal thoughts.
The influence of media, particularly in the post-World War II era, has significantly shaped societal standards of beauty. This has created a culture where individuals, especially adolescents, often compare themselves to idealized images portrayed by celebrities and models, leading to a fixation on thinness as synonymous with happiness and social success. The rise of social media has further intensified these pressures, with phenomena like body shaming becoming prevalent.
As individuals age, their body image continues to evolve, influenced by health, illness, and the pressures of maintaining a positive self-perception. Educational initiatives in schools have emerged to promote a healthier understanding of body image, encouraging acceptance of diversity and individuality while fostering awareness about physical health and well-being. Understanding body image is crucial for cultivating a supportive and inclusive environment that respects the varied experiences and perspectives surrounding physical appearance.
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Body image
Body image refers to the way a person perceives their physical appearance, how they feel about their perception, what they think and believe about their body, and how they behave as a result. Although concerns about body image are most often associated with adolescents, who are just beginning to understand their bodies and can often be exposed to tremendous pressure from peer groups in school, body image is an element of all stages of life as a person ages.
If a person is comfortable with how they think they look, the person has a positive body image. They are more likely to be confident, able to work with others, and able to enjoy a feeling of participation and acceptance. If they have a negative body image, however, that person can suffer from a range of psychologically dysfunctional responses, from awkwardness and social ineptitude to anxiety, depression, eating disorders, self-mutilation, and suicide.
Overview
Body image as a complex field of psychological study emerged after World War II with the growth in visual media—most notably television. Adolescent television viewers were bombarded with shows and commercials featuring images of people whose looks were carefully created by a phalanx of cosmetic experts and fashion consultants. As the mid-century revolution in sexuality emerged, adolescents began as well to consider their body image in relation to their sexual appeal. Sex was no longer solely an activity for after marriage—sex, encouraged by a generation of rock and roll songs that celebrated sexual energy, became a coming-of-age ritual. Body image was key to how well-adjusted adolescents came to feel with each other, in school, and even with their family. With the media’s focus on celebrities, actors, athletes, and models, successive generations of adolescents came to compare their own bodies to idealized and often unrealistic images of people they saw in commercials, in films, on television, in music videos. Such comparisons prompted viewers to redefine their own body images, depending on how they thought they measured up (or not) to the media’s implied definitions of beauty: symmetrical facial features, toned and taut limbs, perfectly aligned and dazzlingly white teeth, coiffed hair, and stylish clothes, for example. Above all, being thin, so the cultural reading went, led to contentment and success and, in turn, secured a prominent and stable social identity. Media portrayals and the culture of beauty may have changed in terms of fashions and fads, but the perception that thin is beautiful persisted in the twenty-first century.
Individuals have continued to feel the pressure for their bodies to conform to what the mainstream media celebrates as "perfect." Adolescents still often measure their self-worth by their appearance more than their character. While the increased attention to body image can create more health awareness, encourage exercise, and help in basic social interactions, body image obsession can lead to self-destructive activities ranging from self-loathing to extreme responses to try to reshape the body including cosmetic surgery, eating disorders, over-exercising, or even suicide.
Body image is not solely a concern for adolescents. Health specialists have tracked how a person adapts to aging by constantly reassessing their body image. Illness, particularly long-term illness with debilitating physical effects, can dramatically impact how a person perceives themselves and can impact their willingness to fight the disease or even engage other people in any kind of social interaction. As a person ages, their assessment of their body is key to maintaining a sense of vitality and optimism.
Body Image Today
According to psychologists, nobody is born with a body image. The perception of the body is shaped not only by media but by family, friends, and neighbors. The concept of body image, however, has undergone significant transformations in the age of computer technology, specifically with the advent of social media and the ubiquity of digital cameras, which have given rise to an inundation of online critiques of others and their appearance, known as body shaming, especially of those who do not fit the popular models for socially acceptable appearance. The advent of software programs, such as Adobe Photoshop, which allow users to digitally manipulate photographs, has complicated the concept of reality itself; airbrushing models in photos increases the disconnect between the person being featured and their constructed image, between reality and the culturally defined ideal.
Schools and universities have developed curricula to help explain the psychological impact of body image. Courses in developing a positive body image encourage students to accept their appearance and to work on a healthy and balanced outlook about their physical features. The courses provide students with information about healthy diets, regular exercise, and regular sleep patterns, and also promote ways to be more accepting of the diversity of their peers, as well as their own uniqueness.
Bibliography
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