Body Image, Self-Esteem, and Health-Related Behaviors Among Male and Female First Year College Students

Headnote

This study examined the relationships among self-esteem, body image, and health-related behaviors of 267 female and 156 male first-year college students. Data were collected in 23 classrooms. Instruments included a demographic sheet, the Objectified Body Consciousness Scale, the Weight and Appearance Visual Analogue Scales, the Contour Drawing Rating Scale, the Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale, and a measure of physical fitness/health-related behaviors. Self-esteem was consistently related to body image dissatisfaction for women, and women consistently exhibited a more negative body image than did men. Even when both men and women were consistent exercisers, the women had poorer body image. Finally, for both men and women, more positive physical fitness/health-related behaviors were positively related to self-esteem and body image.

For women, being beautiful is important for social success. This may be especially true on college campuses where people are rapidly assessed for physical attractiveness (Pipher, 1994). Although the idealized standard for feminine beauty demands that women be thin (Cash & Green, 1986; Garner, Garfinkel, Schwartz, & Thompson, 1980), men typically have been exempt from this standard (Adame & Frank, 1990). However, cultural pressure for men to conform to a thin and muscular ideal has intensified since the 1970s (Lien, Pope, & Gray, 2001), and men are increasingly dissatisfied with their bodies (Cash, Winstead, & Janda, 1986) and want to lose weight or increase muscle tone (McCabe & Ricciardelli, 2004).

In 1950, Schilder described body image as "the picture of our own body which we form in our mind ... [it is] the way in which the body appears to ourselves" (p. 11). More recently, the term body image has been used to reflect one's ability to regard parts of one's body as belonging to the self or to define the boundaries of one's own body (Thompson, 1990) and one's subjective, mental representation of his or her physical appearance. Body image is constructed from self-observation, the reactions of others, and a complicated interaction of attitudes, emotions, memories, fantasies, and experience, both conscious and unconscious. Grogan (1999) described body image as "a person's perceptions, thoughts and feelings about his or her body" and as "subjective and open to change through social influence" (pp. 1-2).

While there are various conceptualizations of body image, few would deny its importance and...