Body Image Research Paper

Although body image is a complex and multifaceted construct, encompassing at least perceptual, affective, cognitive and possibly behavioral aspects of body experience (Cash & Pruzinsky, 1990), in contemporary Western society the major focus has been on the body’s appearance, in particular on body shape and weight. What was stated above is not something that cause surprise as long as nowadays, society, states women’s beauty in a specific way and give with a lot of emphasis the desire of thinness which is something ideal for every woman but is not so easy to achieve (Wiseman, Gray, Mosimann, & Ahrens, 1992). The term body image is mostly used to refer to the feelings and attitudes that people have about the way their bodies look. Although

Although it is less well-documented among males, it gives the idea that men and young men are likewise progressively reporting body disappointment, giving more attention on strength (McCreary and Sasse, 2000). Nevertheless, most of the studies that have been conducted, investigated the body image in people over 18 years old by using a sample of students. As a result of this, most of the researches have studied a limited age range from 18 to 25 years old on average, a limited social and economic status of life and people with a specific educational level (Grogan, 1999). In this way, researches are able to provide limited information on the body image and on how body image is influenced throughout the adult life. The adult life is composed of other responsibilities and as a result it also comes with very high anxiety levels, differences in hormones, in values and generally in the most aspects of everyday life. This means that researches examining the adult life in relation to the body image would probably have different conclusions and also they would be very interesting in relation to the differences from age to age. Moreover, there are various psychological factors like anxiety, bad mood, and low self-esteem that break down the good body image and are incriminated for a negative body image (Hewitt & Flett, 1991; Sassaroli & Ruggiero, 2005; Markey & Vender Wal, 2007). Self-esteem as mentioned above seems to be one of the most important risk factors for the dissatisfaction of the body image (Fairburn et al., 2003). As a result, high self-esteem leads to a positive body image, as these two terms are very close to one another. Furthermore, Emotional Intelligence (EI) plays an important role in the positive or negative body