thesis statement on body image

•   Institutional Repository Home
• Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The impact of social media on body image and eating behaviors

Files in this item.

This item appears in the following collection(s):

Your vanderbilt.

• Current Students
• Faculty & Staff
• International Students
• Parents & Family
• Prospective Students
• Researchers
• Sports Fans
• Visitors & Neighbors

Support the Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries

Gifts to the Libraries support the learning and research needs of the entire Vanderbilt community. Learn more about giving to the Libraries.

Quick Links

• Staff Directory
• Accessibility Services
• Vanderbilt Home
• Privacy Policy

Body Image Distortion

Affiliations.

• 1 Kern Medical Center
• 2 UCLA - Kern Medical
• PMID: 31536191
• Bookshelf ID: NBK546582

Body image is the subjective picture of individuals of their own body, irrespective of how their body actually looks. Body image is a complex construct comprising thoughts, feelings, evaluations, and behaviors related to one’s body. Body image misperception is common in the general population and is also a core component of several serious diseases, including body dysmorphic disorder, anorexia nervosa, and bulimia nervosa. Distortions in body image are unpleasant and can have tragic results. Poor body image can affect physical and psychological health and can influence self-esteem, mood, competence, social functioning, and occupational functioning. The understanding of the neurotypical distortions in healthy cognition and perceptual distortions in clinical conditions is essential to address body image concerns and enable suffering individuals to lead more contented and productive lives. In this activity, we outline the role of body image in psychological and physical functioning and describe features of various body image-related conditions and disorders.

Historical Perspective

Early in the 1900s, there were considerable efforts by neurologists to understand unusual forms of body perception reported by patients with brain injury, or phantom limb experience in amputees. The early concepts of body image indeed were rooted in neuropathology. Head, in 1920, first defined body image as a unity of past experiences created in the cerebral sensory cortex. Schilder, who was a neurologist, proposed a biopsychosocial approach to body image, highlighting the need to examine its neurological, psychological, and sociocultural components. Newell noted that body image is dynamic and changes with age, mood, or even clothing. Krueger suggested that body image is the representation of identity derived from both external and internal body experiences.

What is body image, and why is it important?

Body image is one of the components of personal identity. Body image is the figure that one has on their anthropometric measurements, contours, and shape of the body; and also the feelings correlated to these factors that affect the satisfaction with the body or specific parts of the body. Indeed, body image represents how we think, feel, perceive, and behave regarding our bodies.

Body image is a multidimensional concept. The complexity of body image can be appreciated by looking at its components. These components apply to people with healthy and unhealthy perceptions of their bodies and include:

Cognitive: thoughts and beliefs about the body

Perceptual: how people perceive the size and shape of their body and body parts

Affective: feelings about the body

Behavioral: the actions that people perform to check on, tend to, alter, or conceal their body

Related but different terms are often used interchangeably in the literature concerning the state of consciousness in which there is an altered body image perception, including body image distortion, body image misperception, body image disturbance, negative body image, altered body image, and body dissatisfaction. The problem of variable terms is intensified by the fact that some studies focus on psychiatric or medical patients, some deal with nonpatients, and others deal with both groups.

Body image distortion is a multidimensional symptom, comprising various components of body image. Components that most widely accepted are the cognitive, the perceptive, and the affective. The cognitive component is from thoughts and beliefs concerning body shape and appearance, and the mental representation of the body. The perceptive component involves the identification and estimation of the body, and it indicates the accuracy of the individuals' evaluation of their body size, shape, and weight compared to their actual proportions. Finally, the affective component includes feelings that individuals develop towards their body and satisfaction or dissatisfaction of individuals about their body.

Thereupon, body image disturbance can manifest as disturbance of percept (i.e., distortion) and concept (i.e., body dissatisfaction). Perceptual disturbance involves the failure to evaluate the size of one’s body accurately. Body dissatisfaction includes attitudinal or affective perception of one’s body and negative feelings and cognitions. Body image disturbances are thought to also manifest on a behavioral level, such as body avoidance, body checking, or dieting.

Negative body image characteristically demonstrates a dissatisfaction of body or body parts, preoccupation with appearance, and engaging in behaviors such as frequent mirror checking, self-weighing, or avoidance of public situations. Negative body image often gets measured as body dissatisfaction. Body dissatisfaction is attributable to a discrepancy between the perception of body image and its idealized image.

Body Image Development

There are some debates as to when body image development begins.

Price believes that primitive sense of body image originates in the uterus with spontaneous movements of the fetus and corresponding feedback from sensory and proprioceptive input. Body image is a learned phenomenon from experiences during both pre-natal and post-natal development in which cross-cortical connections and mirror neurons play prominent roles. Complex interactions between neurophysiological, socio-cultural, and cognitive factors contribute to body image development and maintenance. Different factors such as gender, fashion, peer groups, educational and familial influences, evolving socialization, and physical alterations (hair growth, acne, breast development, menstruation) put children into unknown territory with vulnerable body images.

Primary socialization takes place early in life, and a sense of self-recognition is assumed to develop by the age of two. Children in the toddler years become aware of their gender. They also discover social norms, such as competitiveness and athleticism for men (strong legs, muscles, large arms), and beauty or smallness for females (glossy hair, perfect skin, tiny waist, no hips). When children become aware of their body appearance, they attempt to manipulate their parents to receive admiration and approval. This need for approval grows upon starting school, exhibiting a need for social acceptance. Cash assumes body image as a learned behavior. Smolak proposes that children mainly focus on appearance in the context of the toys they play with, such as Barbie dolls. As children grow and socialize, they begin comparing themselves with other children, especially concerning appearance (e.g., little children desire to be bigger). By the age of 6, body shape becomes increasingly prominent consideration (especially muscle and weight). Smolak reported that among school children aged 6 to 12 years old, 40–50% demonstrated dissatisfaction with some part of their body size or shape.

Adolescence indicates the transition from childhood to adulthood and is associated with physical and social changes. Adolescence is a critical period in body image development. Body image in adolescents is also under the influence of parents. The parent-adolescent relationship has a significant impact on the development of adolescents’ body dissatisfaction. Parents send sociocultural or critical messages and messages about body appearance ideals to their children. When Individuals feel secure regarding their relationships, they are more satisfied with their body and less likely to think in ways that they have to adhere to appearance ideals to receive others’ acceptance. Researches have shown that adolescents with better parent-adolescent relationships are less likely to experience body dissatisfaction. Although in younger children, the influence of families on body image development is more significant than friends, the role of parents decreases as children get older and peer responses become more important than families. Body image in people aged 14 to 27 is greatly affected by their peers. A critical event or series of events such as teasing and rejection may lead to body image misperception. Studies have found that the more frequent being teased about body size and weight while growing up, the more likely to experience body image distortion and body dissatisfaction during adulthood.

Copyright © 2024, StatPearls Publishing LLC.

• Introduction
• Epidemiology
• History and Physical
• Treatment / Management
• Differential Diagnosis
• Complications
• Deterrence and Patient Education
• Enhancing Healthcare Team Outcomes
• Review Questions

Publication types

• Study Guide

Got any suggestions?

We want to hear from you! Send us a message and help improve Slidesgo

Top searches

Trending searches

11 templates

teacher appreciation

mother teresa

18 templates

memorial day

12 templates

summer vacation

25 templates

Women's Body Image & Canons Thesis Statement

Women's body image & canons thesis statement presentation, free google slides theme and powerpoint template.

The extreme beauty standards women are forced to endure have shaped our society into unsustainable values that only benefit capitalist corporations who make profit out of women’s insecurities. These standards lead women into unsatisfaction and sometime even to illnesses. What can we do as a society to stop them? Speak about your thesis research with this elegant template filled with images of women of all shapes and colors.

Features of this template

• 100% editable and easy to modify
• 23 different slides to impress your audience
• Contains easy-to-edit graphics such as graphs, maps, tables, timelines and mockups
• Includes 500+ icons and Flaticon’s extension for customizing your slides
• Designed to be used in Google Slides and Microsoft PowerPoint
• 16:9 widescreen format suitable for all types of screens
• Includes information about fonts, colors, and credits of the free resources used

How can I use the template?

Am I free to use the templates?

How to attribute?

Attribution required If you are a free user, you must attribute Slidesgo by keeping the slide where the credits appear. How to attribute?

Related posts on our blog.

How to Add, Duplicate, Move, Delete or Hide Slides in Google Slides

How to Change Layouts in PowerPoint

How to Change the Slide Size in Google Slides

Related presentations.

Premium template

Unlock this template and gain unlimited access

Register for free and start editing online

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Welcome to the Purdue Online Writing Lab

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

The Online Writing Lab at Purdue University houses writing resources and instructional material, and we provide these as a free service of the Writing Lab at Purdue. Students, members of the community, and users worldwide will find information to assist with many writing projects. Teachers and trainers may use this material for in-class and out-of-class instruction.

The Purdue On-Campus Writing Lab and Purdue Online Writing Lab assist clients in their development as writers—no matter what their skill level—with on-campus consultations, online participation, and community engagement. The Purdue Writing Lab serves the Purdue, West Lafayette, campus and coordinates with local literacy initiatives. The Purdue OWL offers global support through online reference materials and services.

A Message From the Assistant Director of Content Development 

The Purdue OWL® is committed to supporting  students, instructors, and writers by offering a wide range of resources that are developed and revised with them in mind. To do this, the OWL team is always exploring possibilties for a better design, allowing accessibility and user experience to guide our process. As the OWL undergoes some changes, we welcome your feedback and suggestions by email at any time.

Please don't hesitate to contact us via our contact page  if you have any questions or comments.

All the best,

Social Media

Facebook twitter.

Here is what Stormy Daniels testified happened between her and Donald Trump

• Show more sharing options
• Copy Link URL Copied!

Porn performer Stormy Daniels took the witness stand Tuesday in the hush money case against former President Trump, who looked on as she detailed their alleged sexual encounter and the payment she got to keep it quiet.

Prosecutors allege Trump paid Daniels to keep quiet about the allegations as he ran for president in 2016. Her testimony aired them very publicly as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee seeks to win the White House again.

Trump denies having sex with Daniels , and his lawyers unsuccessfully pushed for a mistrial midway through her testimony.

It was a major spectacle in the first criminal trial of a former American president, now in its third week of testimony in Manhattan.

Here are some takeaways from Daniels’ testimony:

Who is Stormy Daniels?

The case centers on a $130,000 payment to Daniels from Trump’s then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, in the final weeks of Trump’s 2016 campaign. Prosecutors say it was part of a scheme to illegally influence the campaign by burying negative stories about him.

Stormy Daniels describes meeting Trump in occasionally graphic testimony

The porn actor’s testimony, even if sanitized and stripped of tell-all details, has been the most-awaited spectacle in Donald Trump’s hush money trial.

May 7, 2024

His lawyers have sought to show that Trump was trying to protect his reputation and family — not his campaign — by shielding them from embarrassing stories about his personal life.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, told jurors that she started exotic dancing in high school and appearing in adult films at age 23, eventually moving to direct more than 150 films and winning a roster of porn industry awards.

World & Nation

Key players: Who’s who at Donald Trump’s hush-money criminal trial

Donald Trump’s hush money criminal trial shifts to opening statements Monday, followed by the start of witness testimony. Who’s who in the case?

April 21, 2024

Meeting Trump

Daniels testified she first met and chatted with Trump at a 2006 Lake Tahoe celebrity golf outing where her studio was a sponsor.

He referred to her as “the smart one” and asked her if she wanted to go to dinner, she said. Daniels testified that she accepted Trump’s invitation because she wanted to avoid dinner with her co-workers and thought it might help her career. Trump had his bodyguard get her number, she said.

When they met up later in his penthouse, she appreciated that he seemed interested in the business aspects of the industry rather than the “sexy stuff.” He also suggested putting her on his TV show, “The Apprentice,” a possibility she hoped could help establish her as a writer and director.

She left to use the bathroom and was startled to find Trump in his underwear when she returned, she said. She didn’t feel physically or verbally threatened but realized that he was “bigger and blocking the way,” she testified.

“The next thing I know was: I was on the bed,” and they were having sex, Daniels recalled. The encounter was brief but left her “shaking,” she said. “I just wanted to leave,” she testified.

Stormy Daniels alleges in new documentary that Donald Trump cornered her the night they met

‘I have not forgiven myself because I didn’t shut his a— down in that moment’ in 2006, the adult filmmaker says in ‘Stormy,’ premiering March 18 on Peacock.

March 7, 2024

Payments for silence

Daniels was asked if Trump ever told her to keep things between them confidential, and said, “Absolutely not.” She said she learned in 2011 that a magazine had learned the story of their encounter, and she agreed to do an interview for $15,000 to make money and “control the narrative.” The story never ran.

In 2016, when Trump was running for president, Daniels said she authorized her manager to shop the story around but did not initially receive interest from news outlets. She said that changed in October with the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump bragged about grabbing women sexually without asking permission . She said she learned that Cohen wanted to buy her silence.

Former tabloid publisher testifies about scheme to shield Trump from damaging stories

Trump is back in a New York courtroom as his hush money trial resumes. In D.C., the Supreme Court considers if he should be immune for actions while president.

April 25, 2024

Mistrial push

Midway through her testimony, Trump’s lawyers moved for a mistrial.

Defense lawyer Todd Blanche argued that Daniels’ testimony about the alleged encounter and other meetings with him had “nothing to do with this case,” and would unfairly prejudice the jury.

The judge rejected it, and he faulted defense attorneys for not raising more of their objections while she was testifying.

Before Daniels took the stand, Trump’s lawyers had tried to stop her from testifying about the encounter’s details, saying it was irrelevant in “a case about books and records.”

Prosecutors countered that Daniels’ testimony gets at what Trump was trying to hide and they were “very mindful” not to draw too much graphic detail. Before Daniels took the stand, they told the judge the testimony would be “really basic,” and would not “involve any details of genitalia.”

While the judge didn’t side with Trump’s lawyers, he acknowledged that some details were excessive. The objections could potentially be used by Trump’s lawyers if he is convicted and they file an appeal.

News analysis: Why Putin is raising the specter of nuclear weapons again

Russia announces plans to hold drills near Ukraine simulating the use of battlefield nuclear weapons.

May 6, 2024

Cross-examination

Trump’s lawyers tried to attack Daniels’ credibility, suggesting she was motivated by money and that her account has shifted over the years.

“Am I correct that you hate President Trump?” defense lawyer Susan Necheles asked Daniels at one point. Daniels acknowledged she did.

“And you want him to go to jail?” the lawyer asked.

“I want him to be held accountable,” Daniels said. Pressed again whether that meant going to jail, she said: “If he’s convicted.”

The defense pressed Daniels on the fact that she owes Trump hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees stemming from an unsuccessful defamation lawsuit, and on a 2022 tweet in which she said she “will go to jail before I pay a penny.” Daniels dug in at times in the face of pointed questions, forcefully denying the idea that she had tried to extort money from Trump.

Trump whispered frequently to his attorney during Daniels’ testimony, and his expression seemed to be pained at one point as she recounted details about the dinner she says they shared. He shook his head and appeared to say something under his breath as Daniels testified that Trump told her he didn’t sleep in the same room as his wife.

On the way out of the courthouse, Trump called it “a very revealing day.” He didn’t address Daniels’ testimony explicitly but claimed the prosecutors’ case was “totally falling apart.”

With oil funds and Formula One, Saudi Arabia steamrolls its way onto sports’ hallowed grounds

Saudi Arabia’s oil riches have rocked soccer, golf, even esports, and the autocratic kingdom is expanding in Formula One car racing. What’s behind the push?

May 2, 2024

Jarring split screen

Trump’s appearance in court Tuesday, like all other days he’s stuck in the courtroom, means he can’t be out on the campaign trail as he runs for president a third time. It’s a frequent source of his complaints, but Daniels’ testimony in particular might underscore how much of a distraction the trial is from the business of running for president.

While Trump was stuck in a Manhattan courthouse away from voters and unable to speak for much of the day, President Biden was attending a Holocaust remembrance ceremony and condemning antisemitism .

It’s an issue Trump has sought to use against Biden in the campaign by seizing on the protests at college campuses over the Israel-Hamas war .

Associated Press writer Price reported from New York, Whitehurst from Washington. AP writers Michael Sisak, Jennifer Peltz, Jake Offenhartz and Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this story.

More to Read

Trump trial turns to sex, bank accounts and power: Highlights from the third week of testimony

Commentary: Being a porn star doesn’t make Stormy Daniels a liar. Trump’s lawyer should have known that

May 10, 2024

Judge directs Michael Cohen to keep quiet about Trump ahead of his testimony

Start your day right

Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

More From the Los Angeles Times

Iranian hard-liners firmly in charge of parliament after runoff election

Countries struggle to draft ‘pandemic treaty’ to avoid mistakes made during COVID

U.S. plans to impose major new tariffs on EVs, other Chinese green energy imports

May 11, 2024

In reversal, Virginia school board votes to restore Confederate names to 2 schools