Sociology Body Image

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B: Body image is socially constructed: In medicine, the human body is viewed as a biological entity made of several organs, each has a specific function. In contrast, sociologists believe that the human body is socially constructed. In this sense, the human body has two dimensions: biological and social. The first refers to the way the body carries its biological function and the later refers to how the cultural and societal values shape the body to carry out social functioning. (Shilling, 2003). Therefore, genders try to use their body according to their cultural values and social expectations (Lorber and martin, 2005). For instance, in Western societies, men are expected to be strong, initiators of action and responsible for protection …show more content…

The main focus of the looking-glass perspective is a person self develops during social interaction and a person shapes his identity based on the perception of others. There are three components of the looking glass self (Young & Martin 2003) : (1) we imagine how should we appear to others, (2) we imagine how other people evaluate us based on our appearance, and (3) we develop our self through the judgment of others. According to this theory, people form their self-images as a result of the evaluation of others. If others evaluate some body as an attractive person, then that person will believe him-self as a good looking and has a good body …show more content…

Mead (1934) stated that self-esteem is, in part, a reflection of the opinion others hold of you. Rosenberg (1965: 15) defined self-esteem as "a favorable or non-favorable attitude toward the self. Mann et al (2004) indicated that high self-esteem is related to better health, positive social behaviors, success and protective factor against body image dissatisfaction. In contrast, low self-esteem is associated with risky health behaviors and social problems anxiety, eating disorders and suicidal tendencies. Miller and Downey (1999) indicated that overweight's people are subjected to stigmatization and negative opinions that others hold on them which can affect their self-esteem. Similarly, Hendriks and Burgoon (2003) indicated that overweight women have higher levels of body dissatisfaction and lower levels of self-esteem. Thus, low self-esteem can have strong association with body dissatisfaction if women are comparing themselves to thin body ideal that pictured in