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Wednesday, 9 May, 2001, 23:22 GMT 00:22 UK
Do women have poor body image? Women are up to 10 times more likely than men to be unhappy with their body image. Many think they are too fat!
Women are up to 10 times more likely than men to be unhappy with their
body image, research suggests.
This negative perception persists even when women are a healthy weight for their height, according to a new survey. Researchers found the huge gender gap in body image is even seen among people from professional backgrounds. Overall, female university employees were three times as likely, and female bank workers 10 times as likely as their male colleagues, to see themselves as overweight. Dr Carol Emslie, whose team at the University of Glasgow carried out the research, said "Images are still of very thin women as desirable body shapes. There is still an association that beautiful women are thin. "For men there is still more of a range of images. "Alongside all the bombarding of health messages of keeping your weight under control there must be an awareness that if we push this too much it could become a counterproductive message for women who are a desirable weight for their height.." Scientists at the Medical Research Council Social and Public Health Sciences Unit at the University of Glasgow compiled the report after speaking to 1,500 male and female supervisors and managers in a bank and 2,000 people in clerical, technical and academic posts at an unnamed British university. Eating disorders link Concerns about the way women perceive their bodies has risen in recent years as rates of eating disorders such as anorexia have soared, particularly among young women. Around 90,000 people in the UK are thought to have an eating disorder of some sort, which is usually related to poor body image. Steve Bloomfield from the Eating Disorders Association (EDA) said: "Young women seem to be more affected by the way they look than men. "It seems people's perceptions of themselves is that they don't look right or feel comfortable about their bodies and that's a terrible shame because it's that sort of thinking that can lead to developing an eating disorder." The EDA is currently seeking funding to carry out a comprehensive survey of the extent of eating disorders. The last nationwide survey completed in 1992, showed 60,000 people had an eating disorder and that 90% of these were women. But that is thought to have increased by 30,000. Another survey carried out recently by newwoman.co.uk found just 1% of young women were "completely happy" with the shape of their body and that one in ten had taken drugs to try to achieve their ideal weight. Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_1320000/1320945.stm See also:
Most young women 'unhappy with bodies'
Wednesday May 9, 2001 7:06 PM ET LONDON (Reuter) - Although more men are overweight, women are 10 times more likely to dislike their shape and have a distorted body image, researchers said on Thursday. Whether it's the fashion industry's obsession with wafer-thin models or media images of slim women selling everything from cars to ice cream, even average-sized women think they are too fat and should lose weight. ``Women are likely to think they are too heavy for their height, even when they have a desirable weight,'' said Dr. Carol Emslie, a researcher at the University of Glasgow. ``The ideal female beauty is still being aligned with very thin bodies,'' she added in a telephone interview. Eating disorders among teenagers and young adults are well documented but Emslie and her team found that problems with body image are also evident in women in their 30s and 40. The researchers calculated the body mass index, a standard measure to gauge obesity, of 3,500 professional men and women from a bank and a university in Scotland. They also asked them whether they thought they were overweight or not. More than one third of men working at the bank and 34.5 percent at the university were measured as overweight, compared to 20.7 of the women bank employees and less than 30 percent of women at the university. But men who should have been concerned about their weight and its health implications were not, and women who had no need to worry thought they needed to lose weight. In the study, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, Emslie found women working at the university were three times more likely than the men to think they were overweight. At the bank, the women were 10 times more likely to think they were overweight. ``Our findings suggest that concern about women's perceptions of their body image is well founded,'' she said. Another recent survey of more than 2,000 women in Britain revealed that 80 percent thought big was definitely not beautiful. Many women who were overweight said their excess bulk was ruining their social and sex lives and damaging their careers. The British Medical Association has criticized the media's image of women and the obsession with stick-thin models. It called for a more realistic body shape to be shown on television and in fashion magazines. Source: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010509/sc/health_image_dc.html |
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