Is the Body the Self? Women and Body Image
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE Coll. Antropol. 31 (2007) 1: 63–67 Review Is the Body the Self? Women and Body Image Janet Polivy and Peter Herman Department of Psychology, University of Toronto at Mississauga, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada ABSTRACT This paper discusses how women’s body image or experience of the body influences their identity and self-image. What are the implications of this tendency to equate the body and the self? For many women, being a dieter represents not only something that they do, but also an important aspect of how they see themselves. We propose that choosing to become a chronic dieter is a means of regulating not just one’s feelings, but also one’s identity and self-image when those central aspects of the self feel threatened. Weight-loss dieting is often unsuccessful, however, and repeated dieting attempts may increase weight as often as they reduce it, so using body shape to determine self-worth or identity is a maladaptive strat- egy for most women. Key words: body image, self-image, obesity, woman This paper focuses on one small but important aspect high as 65 per cent7. In this paper, we will discuss dieting of self and identity that has important implications for and body dissatisfaction, but we will be referring to these women’s health and for the increasing prevalence of obe- feelings and behaviors more specifically in women, not in sity over the last two decades. We will discuss how the population at large. It is primarily women who are women’s body image or experience of the body (and at- (or feel) pressured to conform to the thin ideal, who see tempted manipulations of that experience) influence themselves as too fat, and who define their self-worth on their very identity and view of themselves, and the impli- the basis of their perceptions of their weight and sha- cations of this tendency to equate the body and the self. pe8,9. Not surprisingly then, it is women who go on diets The psychological literature abounds with studies of how when they feel fat, and perhaps in response to this pres- media images affect young women, as well as specula- sure, it is also women who are more likely to under-re- tions about the degree to which these images and the port their weights10. Finally, it is primarily women who thin ideal that they reflect contribute to the development develop eating disorders8. Thus, this is an issue for of eating disorders in these women1. women’s health rather than for men’s. Men seem to feel At the same time, obesity has become an interna- good about themselves regardless of the realities (and tional epidemic2. Data from our lab and others suggests shortcomings) of their appearance. In fact, men are more that the rise in disordered eating–both self-starvation likely to be overweight, and less likely to diet or try to do and overeating or even binge eating–may reflect this something about their weight (e.g., weight-loss surge- 11 12 overemphasis of the body in the definition of the self3. ry ; want to lose 20 pounds ; and engage in dieting as adolescents13; even though there is evidence that the In our society, appearance, and in particular the ap- health risks of obesity are greater for men than for pearance of one’s body, is a major factor in how others re- women1. Adolescent boys are concerned with increasing act to us and how we feel about ourselves. The prevailing their muscle tone, rather than with decreasing their sociocultural preference for thin female body shapes is weights14. well-documented, and has been associated with both the 4 rise in prevalence of eating disorders and the social der- All of us know someone who is on a diet. For many 5 ogation of overweight . women, however, being a dieter represents not only so- For young women in particular, concern about weight mething that they do, but may also be an important as- and appearance has become what amounts to an obses- pect of how they see themselves. We have found15 that for sion. Body dissatisfaction has long been described as a people who are themselves chronic dieters (or what we »normative discontent« for women6 and the prevalence call restrained eaters), whether or not someone else is of dieting among adolescent females is reported to be as also a dieter becomes the most memorable characteristic Received for publication November 6, 2006 63 J. Polivy and P. Herman: Is the Body the Self?, Coll. Antropol. 31 (2007) 1: 63–67 of that other person. When given a one-page description bouts of overeating as a means of avoiding unpleasant of »Donna« that included information about her hobbies, emotions, by blaming all negative affect on their (over) her profession, and her weight and dieting habits, re- eating instead of the real and often more threatening strained eaters (that is, chronic on again-off again dieters causes such as their own failures and shortcomings. Di- who are concerned about their weight) remembered the eters sometimes use their eating as a means of emotional weight and dieting information pretty much to the exclu- self-regulation18. We are now taking this argument a step sion of everything else, whereas unrestrained eaters (or further and proposing that choosing to become a chronic nondieters, who are not concerned about their weight) dieter is a means of regulating not just one’s feelings, but remembered the same absolute amount of information, one’s identity and self-image when those central aspects but spread across all the various domains of Donna’s ex- of the self feel threatened. istence (or self). For some time now, our work on restrained eating has Body weight and appearance are clearly important to been used to help researchers to understand those who women, especially chronic dieters, those women who are are the most restrained eaters of all, eating- disorder engaged in a long-term struggle to sculpt the body into a patients18, 19. College-student dieters have provided a good more desirable shape. Given our societal idealization of a analogue population for studying eating disorders because thin female physique, this does not seem particularly chronic dieters and eating-disorder patients share many surprising. In fact, our research shows5 that dieters have characteristics. These characteristics include an over-con- strong explicit biases against fatness, and dieters and cern with appearance and weight, consequent dieting to nondieters alike have negative implicit attitudes toward reduce or control one’s weight, inattention to one’s bodily fatness and positive attitudes toward thinness. This signals for emotion and hunger (possibly to facilitate diet- means that when asked directly (explicitly), dieters are ing and weight loss), and underlying personality charac- more likely to express negative beliefs and attitudes teristics such as low self-esteem and neuroticism (which about fatness, and to have internalized these attitudes as may be what prompt one to try to lose weight in the first their own more strongly than nondieters have; but when place). We shall reverse this perspective now, though, and tested for their automatic (implicit) responses to »fat« use what we know about eating-disorder patients to help and »thin« words, everyone shows the sociocultural bias us to better understand dieters. against fatness and in favor of thinness. Thus, even One similarity between eating-disorder patients and nondieters share in the sociocultural preference for thin dieters is the age of onset of the relevant (or symptom- body shapes, and have implicit attitudes favoring thin- atic) behaviors. Both begin during adolescence. In fact, ness over fatness; but for dieters, these beliefs are identi- both begin with body dissatisfaction and a desire to be fied as their own personal values. When women internal- thinner that seems to occur around puberty4, 9.Inthe ize these body-related attitudes and see themselves in eating-disorder field, it is now apparent that this associa- terms of body shape, they often wind up feeling dissatis- tion with puberty is probably not coincidental8, 20. The fied and bad about themselves1. demands of puberty and maturation coincide with a time If societal acceptance is predicated on a thin body, of serious transition and identity formation, which can then women should seek to attain such a body in order to destabilize personality21. Young women facing both the achieve acceptance; thus all women should be restrained challenges of puberty and maturation, and at the same eaters, striving to be thin. But recent assessments indi- time suffering from personal deficits such as low self-es- cate that today only about 35% to 60% of women in gen- teem, may be particularly vulnerable to societal pres- eral are chronically dieting restrained eaters. Chronic di- sures concerning appearance8, 20. In an effort to rebuild eting is thus a choice that many women make, but not their identity, they may turn to dieting and become pre- all; why don’t all women make this choice? occupied with weight. These activities are socially accept- The simple answer would seem to be that »only those able, and both age- appropriate and permissible within who aren’t already thin choose dieting to become thin, their peer group, thus offering what may appear to be an and thus accepted.« But is this really true? Although re- ideal solution for girls struggling to define themselves strained eaters do tend to be somewhat heavier than are and be accepted by others. Dieting may thus become a fo- unrestrained eaters, the overlap in the distributions of cus of identity for these young women.