**2. Body image and beauty**

Body image is commonly understood as how one looks in the mirror. By staring at your body in the mirror, you will notice some physical characteristics including shape, size, height, skin tone, and so forth. However, do you think these characteristics truly reflect your body? Does your body seem bigger or smaller than you expect? I think you would agree with me that what we see is often not how we feel. There is a great amount of discrepancy between what our body actually looks like and what we perceive our body to be. Furthermore, how do you like the way you look? Do you have an opinion about your body every time you check yourself out in the mirror?

Psychologists coined the term body image to refer to one's perceptions and attitudes towards his/her physical characteristics [1]. Body image is a multidimensional concept that subsumes cognitive, affective, behavioral, and perceptual facets [2, 3]. For instance, perceiving your body to be a certain way can give rise to various emotions, lead you to have positive or negative thoughts, and result in behaviors in an attempt to modify your body.

More specifically, psychologists have been interested in studying the development of body image and its influence on other aspects of people's life. Plato once said, "The body, in which we are imprisoned like an oyster in its shell" [4]. One can easily imagine that our feelings towards and opinions of our bodies can fundamentally influence our day-to-day life experiences. Therefore, in order to understand one's idea of beauty, we must inevitably take a close look at his/her body image.

The first question that researchers began to investigate was how accurate people's body perception was. Researchers asked individuals to estimate their body sizes and compared the estimations against their actual measurements. The results show that some people have inaccurate estimations as they perceived their bodies to be either bigger or smaller than their actual sizes [5, 6]. Furthermore, people who tend to overestimate their sizes are more likely to develop eating disorders [7]. Among anorexic patients, researchers examined whether their body distortions stem from inaccurate visual inputs or distorted views of their bodies. They employed assessments such as digital photography techniques and figure drawing scales. It turns out that there is not much difference in the patients' visual sensitivity (i.e. heightened ability in processing visual information) but disturbances in how they interpret the images of their bodies [8, 9]. Hence, their biased attitudes towards weight and size caused them to have a distorted body image.

This discovery naturally led to the next question about the attitudinal component of body image. In other words, what attitudes do people have in relation to their physical appearance? Researchers examined this question by first asking people if they were satisfied with their body image. The results show that around 61 to 93% of people were not satisfied with either their overall appearance or specific body areas [10, 11]. More specifically, around 50% of preadolescent girls and 30% of preadolescent boys reported dissatisfaction with their body [12–14]. In adults, approximately 60% of women and 40% of men see their body negatively, and these

#### *Blossoming for Whom? Social Approval and Body Image DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.94503*

rates remain stable across the lifespan [15, 16]. In addition to being dissatisfied, people also reported experiencing emotional distress (including shame, anxiety, or discomfort) with regards to their body [1]. They could experience such distress at specific moments or as part of their general life experience.

Body image distortion and dissatisfaction can have serious consequences. People with negative body image are at risk of having low self-esteem, depression, social anxiety, impaired sexual functioning, and reduced quality of life [1, 17, 18]. They may engage in risky health behaviors including unhealthy eating, physical inactivity, unsafe sex, smoking, and so forth [19–22]. Negative body image can also contribute to the development and maintenance of body dysmorphic disorder and eating disorders [23, 24].

Eating disorders are serious and sometimes life-threatening illnesses. They often involve serious medical complications that can cause permanent damage or death. People with eating disorders also have an increased risk of dying by suicide. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, the accumulated lifetime prevalence of eating disorders (including anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder) was around 4% among adults and 2.7% among adolescents aged 13 to 18 years [25]. Overall, approximately 30 million Americans have struggled with an eating disorder over their lifetime. Moreover, probably twice the number of people or more are also struggling with eating disturbances even if their conditions do not yet meet the criterion of a clinical diagnosis [26]. This is why body image distortion and dissatisfaction are implicated in a range of public health concerns such as eating disorders [27].

For people with negative body image, their passage to beauty and selfappreciation is blocked, because having a healthy and positive body image sits at the core of beauty. Merriam-Webster defines beauty as "a quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit" [28]. It is one thing to please the senses of others, but it is another to please oneself. To appreciate the beauty within him/herself, a person must be able to view his/her body positively in the first place. However, it would difficult if a person views him/herself unfavorably and struggles with unpleasant emotions and feelings towards his/her own body. Therefore, in order to reinstate the sense of beauty and self-appreciation within individuals, we must first understand the concept of body image.

### **3. Societal standards of body image**

At this point, you might wonder what causes people to have distorted and disapproving views of their body. Thomas F. Cash, a leading expert in the field of body image, proposed that there are two views of human appearance [29]. One is the "outside view" as how our physical appearance influences our interpersonal experiences. For example, physical attractiveness plays a role in an array of contexts such as friendship, romantic relationships, and job opportunities. The other is the "inside view" which is a person's subjective experiences of his/her appearance. The inside view was later defined as "body image" [29]. When we talk about body image, we are referring to a person's own perceptions, attitudes, emotions, and beliefs regarding his/her appearance. However, the inside view is built upon and largely influenced by the outside view.

Societal standards regarding body image have a prominent influence on an individual's self-image. As a society, we hold standards for a large variety of qualities. Among these dimensions of self, one's physical body is the most prominent [30]. The values and beliefs about physical attractiveness are referred to as societal standards

of beauty. The concept of beauty is ever-changing, as it has constantly evolved over time and varied across cultures. The standards of different societies stem from two main sources of influence: biology and culture [31]. In developed countries, as the issue of survival becomes less of a concern, people's preferences for ideal body shape have shifted from a sultry and voluptuous ideal to a thin and slender ideal. Nowadays, the modern ideal body shape has increasingly become both thin and very fit [32]. These ideals then circulate to other parts of the world due to globalization and have been infused into the standards of other countries and cultures. A crossnational comparison study found that the pressure to conform to Western ideals significantly predicts ideal body stereotype internalization for female participants from America, Poland, and the Czech Republic [32].

How are people influenced by these societal standards? Psychologists proposed a persuasive model - the Tripartite Influence Model [33]. It describes how social influence from media, family, and peers can predict body image and eating disturbances. The model also suggests that individual factors, such as internalization of the ideal body shape (regardless of how the ideal body shape is defined in a given society) and a chronic tendency towards social comparison, could mediate these social influences.

Societal standards are pervasively communicated through media messages. Traditional forms of media, such as TV commercials and magazines, have been advocating and promoting the desirability of an unrealistically thin ideal [34, 35]. For example, a study about print media found that adolescent girls would endorse their ideal as the models in fashion magazines specifically targeting teenage girls [36]. New social media, such as Instagram, Pinterest, or Tumblr, are image based. Seeing the images of thin and athletic peers provides a convenient target of upward social comparison for female viewers and motivates them to achieve a similar body shape. Many researchers in the field of eating disorders have criticized the media's role in the formation of eating and body image disturbances (e.g., [34–36]).

The media equate an ideal body shape not only with attractiveness but also with success. American culture emphasizes that physical attractiveness helps to achieve success in every area of life [32]. It is believed that thinness is crucial for success and happiness and people with the ideal body shape are likely to have a high social status. On the contrary, overweight or obese people are under pervasive appearancebased social discrimination and are often associated with negative qualities such as unattractive, lazy, immoral and dishonest [37].

Through this socialization process, women are disproportionately influenced by the social standards of beauty. Studies have unanimously observed greater body dissatisfaction among women than men [8, 9, 15]. Psychologists propose that the gender differences in body image originate from a sexual dimorphism through the general developmental process and the subsequent divergent psychosocial experiences of both genders [8, 31]. From an evolutionary perspective, beauty and attractiveness are not merely a cultural concept, but rather an important factor in determining one's odds of survival and reproductive success. Through the process of defining prominent features of attractiveness for both genders, different standards have emerged. Traditional gender roles associate femininity with beauty and the desire for an attractive appearance, while masculinity is associated with force and control [8]. This focus on esthetic qualities of the body creates a low level of body esteem and dissatisfaction among women [31]. Moreover, mass media portray beauty as a woman's primary objective. They also normalize the pressure that women experience with body image as if it is normal and acceptable for a woman to be ashamed and anxious about her body and appearance [38]. However, this is by no means to say that men are not affected by societal standards of beauty. In fact, a growing trend of body dissatisfaction has been observed among men [39]. While some of them are affected by the thin ideal, others are actively pursuing a masculine body ideal with high muscle mass. This tendency could posit men at similar risk of developing body image disturbance and eating disorders.
