Sociocultural, feminist, and psychological influences on women’s body satisfaction: A structural modeling analysis

We explored sociocultural, feminist, and psychological influences on women’s body dissatisfaction by examining the manner in which awareness and internalization of appearance standards, feminist ideology, and self-esteem affect body dissatisfaction. A main goal of the study was to test a model of potential protective mechanisms against internalization of appearance standards. The LISREL 8.5 program was used to perform structural modeling analyses on the proposed theoretical models. The results supported previous findings regarding the influential role of sociocultural variables on women’s body dissatisfaction. In particular, internalization was found to mediate the relationship between awareness and body dissatisfaction. Feminist ideology and self-esteem were not found to serve as protective mechanisms against internalization. However, self-esteem appeared to directly affect body dissatisfaction. Strikingly high rates of eating disorders, weight preoccupa-tion, and body dissatisfaction among college women have been documented (Mintz & Betz, 1988; Spitzer, Hender-son, &Zivian, 1999; Streigel-Moore, Silberstein, Grunberg, & Rodin, 1990). In one study, as many as 61 % of college women were found to engage in various forms of disturbed eating behaviors including chronic dieting, bingeing, and purging (Mintz & Betz, 1988). Body dissatisfaction ap-pears to be even more normative among women in uni-versity settings where rates greater than 80 % have been re-ported (Spitzer et al., 1999). Body dissatisfaction is widely recognized as a risk factor for the development of eating disorders as there is consistent evidence that body image predicts severity of eating and dieting pathology (Gleaves