Sep 5, 1997 - 1997;5:402-409. Although men and women show similar rates of obesity, ... Key words: obesity, body image, gender differences, body dissatisfaction, drive .... results, presented in Table 1, strongly support the first two hypotheses. ..... interacted to influence satisfaction with both body shape and weight, such ...
Gender Differences in Body Satisfaction Regina Pingitore, *, f Bonnie Spring, *, f David Garfield$ Abstract PINGITORE, REGINA, BONNIE SPRING, DAVID GARFIELD. Gender differences in body satisfaction. Obes Res. 1997;5:402-409. Although men and women show similar rates of obesity, women more frequently engage in weight loss efforts, with potentially adverse health consequences. We surveyed 320 college-aged men and women to examine gender differences in the determinants of body dissatisfaction and the degree of importance assigned to bodyweight and shape. Results indicated that, for both genders, satisfaction with bodyweight and shape decreased as body mass index (BMI) increased. Women, however, showed significantly greater body and weight dissatisfaction than men at most weight categories. Only the underweight (BMk20) women and men were similarly satisfied with their bodyweight and shape. As BMI increased, however, women became disproportionately more dissatisfied: both normal-weight and overweight women expressed greater dissatisfaction than comparable men. College-aged women also attributed progressively more importance to both weight and shape as BMI increased, unlike college-aged men, who considered body weight equally important to (or slightly less important than) self-esteem as BMI increased. We discuss implications for the self-esteem of obese women and men. Key words: obesity, body image, gender differences, body dissatisfaction, drive for thinness
Introduction Western culture places such a high premium on thinness that, in the United States alone, the weight loss industry nets nearly 29 billion dollars per year (7,29). Consistent with the prevailing belief that control over body weight is a ~
Submitted for publication October 28, 1996. Accepted for publication March 26, 1997. From the *Department of Psychology, University of Health Sciencesmhe Chicago Medical School; tBiological Psychiatry, Hines VA Medical Center; and $Department of Psychiatry, University of Health Sciencesme Chicago Medical School, Chicago, IL. Reprint requests to Regina Pingitore, Department of Psychology, FUHSKMS, 3333 Green Bay Road, N. Chicago, IL 60064. Copyright 0 1997 NAASO.
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personal responsibility (2), persons with obesity are perceived negatively and suffer meaningful social and occupational discrimination (10). Yet, at the same time, most dieters fail to achieve their desired weight, and those who do attain their goal weight rarely maintain the weight loss over an extended period of time (34). In consequence, the person who is overweight is placed in a terrible double-bind: he or she is judged negatively for not achieving a physical status that has minimal likelihood of being attained and kept. Although the emphasis on thinness has affected both sexes, the implications of violating socially determined body weight ideals are different for men and women. Society equates thinness with beauty and attractiveness in women but does not use bodyweight as the central criteria to judge attractiveness in men (1). Because attractiveness, in general, has a more powerful effect on the lives of women than men (4), it is not surprising that the consequences of breaching bodyweight norms are more negative for women than for men (16). Also not surprising is the early onset of the preoccupation of women with losing weight and achieving a slim physique (33). By adolescence, for example, 63% of girls, as compared with 16% of boys, are already trying to lose weight (25). The current ideal body type for women requires both thinness and shapeliness and is so stringent as to be unattainable for most women. Only the thinnest 5% of women approximate today’s ideal body type, thus excluding 95% of American women (14). Unlike prior decades, when a full figure like that of Jane Russell or Marilyn Monroe was considered beautiful, today’s standards not only emphasize shapeliness, but also leanness with an increased focus on size and weight. As a result, preoccupation with body shape and weight has become so common among women in western societies that body dissatisfaction has been described as a ‘‘normative discontent” so pervasive that ‘‘being a women means feeling too fat” (24, p. 227). In fact, research findings suggest that body dissatisfaction is not actually dependent on whether or not a woman is overweight (5,13) but instead characterizes women of all weight categories. Prior proposals, however, have tended to assess body dissatisfaction using measures that confound weight and shape, yet it is unclear whether these constructs are the same. For example, many beautifully shaped women feel dissatisfied
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with their bodies because they feel they weigh too much. Similarly, many slim women feel dissatisfied because of perceived inadequacies in their figures. As such, body dissatisfaction may be composed of both weight and shape concerns. Men, in contrast, appear to have been spared from such intensive pursuit of thinness, partly because obesity, although incurring some negative sanctions in both sexes, is more tolerable in men. Whereas the media portrayal of the young woman’s ideal body type is thin and shapely, young men are portrayed as strong and muscular. Not surprisingly, therefore, some researchers have found that many young men want to gain weight (8,25) in order to attain a larger, more mesomorphic physique (32). On the other hand, other research has shown that some men do worry about being overweight and diet in an attempt to achieve a leaner stature (6,27). Differences between men and women continue to be evident with regard to concerns about weight regulation and dieting practices. Men are more likely to increase physical activity as their method of dieting, whereas women dieters are more likely to restrict food intake (3,5). These differing weight loss practices suggest that when men diet, their intention is often to enhance their body build by becoming more muscular, rather than to become thinner as women dieters aim to do. Some researchers have argued that cultural attitudes toward the male body are in a state of change, presenting men with an increasing amount of pressure to attain a muscular, mesomorphic body physique. If so, then, men may be moving closer to women on the continuum of body dissatisfaction such that body shape concerns, and to a lesser degree concerns with weight, are becoming more prevalent. It is also possible that the nature of the relationship between body size and body satisfaction differs for men and women. If the masculine ideal is a large, muscular physique, then both men who are very lean and men who are very obese may be more dissatisfied with their body shape and weight than men of more moderate builds. The purpose of this study was to examine gender differences in the relationship among weight, body satisfaction, and the importance of body shape and weight in a sample of college-aged adults. We hypothesized that actual body mass would be predictive of shape and weight satisfaction for both genders, but that both the nature and the strength of this relationship would differ for women and men. We expected that for women, as weight increased, dissatisfaction with both shape and weight would become disproportionately greater and they would construe both shape and weight as more salient to their self-concept. For men, we hypothesized that the relationship between body size and satisfaction would be curvilinear such that both men who are underweight and men who are obese would be more dissatisfied with their bodies than would men with more moderate body builds. We also predicted that, overall, weight would be less important to the self-concept of men
than women, even for men who are dissatisfied with their bodies.
Method Subjects Subjects were 320 college undergraduates (99 men, 221 women) who fulfilled a course requirement by completing a self-report demographic questionnaire before participating in a larger study that examined bias against overweight job applicants in a simulated employment interview (See Ref. 21 for details). Participants gave written informed consent to participate. The sample was predominantly white and ranged in age from 18 years to 26 years ( M = 22; SD= 1.4). Measures Demographic Features. A demographic questionnaire asked subjects to supply information about age, gender, height, and bodyweight. Height and weight data were used to compute each subject’s body mass index (BMI) (weight kgiheight m’). Body Shape Satisfaction. The Body Shape Satisfaction scale (BSS) was used to assess subjects’ satisfaction with their current body shape. The BSS is a shortened form of the Body Cathexis Scale (26) that includes only those physical features that can be altered by changes in bodyweight. Respondents were asked to rate how satisfied they were with 11 physical features (e.g. stomach, buttocks, legs) by using a 5-point Likert scale with 1= completely dissatisfied and 5 =completely satisfied (3,17,20). Lower scores on the summated scale reflected greater dissatisfaction with these physical features, whereas higher scores reflected greater satisfaction. The BSS showed high internal consistency reliability for this sample, with an a coefficient of r=0.88. The overall Body Cathexis Scale shows good construct validity, correlating negatively with depression-proneness (19), actual bodyweight and percentage of body fat (3), and drive for thinness (1 1) and positively with self-esteem and physical activity (23). Weight Satisfaction. Subjects also were asked to make a rating that specifically characterized their degree of satisfaction with their current bodyweight by using a 5-point rating scale that ranged from 1 (very dissatisfied) to 5 (very satisfied). Construct validity for the weight satisfaction rating is suggested by prior results indicating that higher scores correlated negatively with the desire to lose weight (34) and the actual number of weight loss attempts (12). Importance of Body Shape to the Self-concept. The salience of body shape to the self-concept was assessed by having subjects rate how important each item in the BSS was to their self-concept by using a 5-point Likert scale that ranged from 1 (not at all important) to 5 (very important) (17,18; M. Richards, unpublished data). Lower scores indicated that these body shape features were less important to OBESITY RESEARCH Vol. 5 No. 5 Sept. 1997 403
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the self-concept, whereas higher scores indicated greater importance. These scores have been reported to be significantly and positively correlated with measures of selfesteem and self-concept (17,18). For this sample, the scale had high internal consistency reliability, with an CY coefficient of r = 0.90. Importance of Weight to the Self-concept. Subjects also made a rating that specifically characterized the degree to which their current body weight was important to their selfconcept by using a 5-point scale that ranged from 1 (not at all important) to 5 (very important). Positive correlations between this rating and history of dieting provide evidence that the scale has construct validity (15,20; M. Richards, unpublished data).
Results Shape and Weight Satisfaction A hierarchical regression model was constructed to test the proposed relationships among BMI, gender, and body shape satisfaction. This regression model tested the hypotheses that a high BMI and female gender would both contribute to body shape dissatisfaction, as demonstrated by significant main effects of each. It also tested the hypothesis that the relationship between body size and body shape dissatisfaction would be different for men and women, as demonstrated by significant gender by BMI interaction. The results, presented in Table 1, strongly support the first two hypotheses. BMI explained a significant 14% of the variance in body shape satisfaction, indicating that higher BMI values were associated with greater shape dissatisfaction. Over and above the effect of BMI, the effect of gender was also significant and explained an additional 9% of the variance, indicating that college-age women were generally less satisfied with their body shape than their male counterparts. After the effects of BMI and gender had both been removed, their interaction explained a small, but statistically significant, additional 2% of the variance in body shape satisfac-
tion. The final model accounted for 25.3% of the variance in body shape satisfaction: F[3,314] = 35.64, p
