Abstract
“Body image” is an important issue in contemporary society, not least because of the potential impact of body dissatisfaction on mental health, particularly for women. Academic and popular interest in body image has increased significantly in the 21st century. Grogan’s third edition of Body Image: Understanding Body Dissatisfaction in Men, Women, and Children (2017) provides an up-to-date review of scholarly developments in the field. Through a wide-ranging review of the existing scholarly literature and the data gathered for this book, Grogan investigates the mediating influence of age, ethnicity, socio-economic class, and sexuality, along with the behavioural effects of these influences on women’s, men’s and children’s body image. She integrates key theories with an account of contemporary issues, illustrated with recent empirical research. While she approaches body image primarily from a psychological perspective, she skilfully integrates viewpoints from other disciplines, including sociology, women’s studies, cultural studies, clothing and textiles research, and media studies. Moreover, she summarizes a wealth of data from surveys and interviews with men, women, and children from the UK, the US and Australia.
Grogan ably demonstrates how shifts over time, culture, and economic circumstances have determined what is considered the ideal body image. She defines body image as a subjective phenomenon that must be considered within the context and cultural milieu in which people with body dissatisfaction find themselves. She also demonstrates the social relativity of body satisfaction by illustrating how it varies within diverse social subcultures.
The gendered nature of body dissatisfaction is attended to by Grogan, highlighting the role of appearance-related social pressures that bear more heavily on women, but also the growing social pressures on men related to the increasing visibility and marketability of the male body in the media today. In this regard, she reviews research on the role of media representations in creating unfavourable social comparisons that result in dissatisfaction, showing the gendered nature of these. Interestingly, she highlights how these gendered patterns are evident among children as young as eight who express their “fear of fat” and aspire to similar gendered body norms. The author’s interview data suggest that women are critical of the narrow range of body shapes and unrealistic ideals presented by the media; nevertheless, the research on media effects she reviews indicates that women and girls continue to compare their bodies unfavourably with those of fashion models and actresses. Grogan considers also the intersection of gender and sexuality and how this intersection impacts on body image, highlighting white heterosexual women and gay men as most likely to experience body dissatisfaction, partly due to difference in cultural pressures regarding body shape and size.
In considering the role of cultural body norms, Grogan questions the current ideal body image as representing a healthy body, tracing the historical development of this norm, linking it to (white) Western ideals. Alongside this historical discussion, she presents evidence indicating that cultural groups that do not stigmatize body size and support “alternative” body images may enable men and women to resist social pressure to conform to white Western body norms. African American and Afro-Caribbean cultures, for instance, present more flexible and less thin body-shape ideals, so that black women tend to be more satisfied with their bodies than white women.
At the same time, however, Grogan suggests that dominant white body ideals do impinge on some women of colour, citing evidence of recent increases in dissatisfaction in Asian‑American and Hispanic women and girls. The emphasis in this book is largely on dissatisfaction with body size/shape (stomach, hips, thighs and chest) but less on appearance features (skin colour, hair, genitals and facial features) that tend to be racially charged. Similarly, intersections between ethnicity and religion/spirituality are not discussed, an important omission given possible variations in religious practices (e.g., fasting, clothing) in different ethnic communities. It must also be noted that the chapter on age, social class, ethnicity/race, and sexuality appears quite late in this volume; as a result, these important themes are barely mentioned until p. 135.
In considering how to address body dissatisfaction, Grogan argues for the acceptance of the wide variety of body shapes and sizes as “normal” and the destigmatization of the “overweight” in mainstream Western cultures. She also recommends psychoeducational interventions that aim to improve self-esteem, self-efficacy, and assertiveness, and to reduce the internalization of thin/muscular ideals, social-comparison and self-objectification, together with interventions encouraging moderate exercise for the purpose of “mastery rather than aesthetics”. These, she argues, can foster resistance to the negative impact of the internalization of the thin ideal propagated by media imagery. However, she demonstrates that, while such interventions have generally been successful in training women to be sceptical about media images, they have largely failed to reduce body dissatisfaction, specifically in low-risk participants. Grogan suggests interventions aimed at fostering resistance and challenging unhealthy upward social comparisons to instil a strong, positive body image. However, these interventions lack long-term follow-up measures, so that the effects of these new ideas on a wide range of people are as yet unclear. Moreover, these interventions are accessible only for individuals with the time and money to invest in their body image.
This book is highly suitable for teaching, with several features making it readable for students. These features include a clear writing style, numerous headings, illustrative photos of women and men (albeit predominantly white), illustrations of body image dissatisfaction tools, and a summary of each chapter in bullet points that makes her research more accessible. In addition, the book’s chapters are presented as stand-alone chapters, making them ideal as prescribed readings. (This configuration can, however, create repetition and some redundancy across the chapters when read as a whole.)
While the book helps students learn to think critically about a wide range of body image research and theory, it suffers from several shortcomings which may limit its usefulness for more advanced readers. For instance, although Grogan splendidly reviews and articulates the theories of others (e.g., Bordo, 2003; Cash, 2004; Wolf, 1991), her own voice is absent. She also appears to apply the “hypodermic needle model” in suggesting that the media contribute to body dissatisfaction and eating disorders by portraying unrealistic ideals. Furthermore, her work does not suggest ways in which these unrealistic ideals can be addressed and modified. She mentions awareness-raising social activities against the slender-ideal image in the media, but provides no details as to how they work or what they have achieved in terms of promoting positive body image in diverse populations.
Arguably, too, some of the terms mentioned throughout the book need clearer definition. For instance, the reader might be confused by the term “affluent cultures” and what precisely they constitute. Similarly, where Grogan reflects on men’s tendency to be larger than women, the difference between heavy and large/muscular might be usefully defined. The reader might also question the repeated use of the term “Western culture” where participants might more accurately be identified as “English-speaking”. Hence, while including these new studies can be insightful and inspiring, the limitations in the way they are reported may create problems for the reader.
Methodologically, the critical attention that Grogan applies to others’ studies is absent from the analysis of her own data. Grogan emphasizes the importance of investigating the relation between complex social identities and body image, yet this is not adequately attended to in her own work. There are also some contradictions and lack of evidence throughout this book. For example, Grogan discredits socio-economic status as contributing to ideal body image, although the data suggest well‑documented social-class differences in the incidence of being classified as “overweight”, with working‑class women and men more likely to fall into the “obese” category than those in the middle classes (Bojorquez & Unikel, 2012; Campos, 2004; Monaghan, 2005) and that attaining a fashionable body image requires economic power.
Despite these shortcomings, this reader-friendly book can be used as an excellent reference to identify supporting tools and sources to develop analytical and methodological skills for reviewing and producing future research on body image for students in the related areas as well as those with an interest in promoting positive body image.
