Western culture has increasingly valued physical appearance and in particular slenderness in the last 20 years. Unrealistic targets of thinness and excessive weight loss have led to eating disorders, the idea of obligatory exercise and other mental health problems. The concept of dissatisfaction with one's body image is driven home by images of ultra-thin models appearing in newspapers, magazines and television. This book brings together leading international research in this alarming and growing field.

The Media and Body Image draws together literature from sociology, gender studies, and psychology; brings together new empirical work on both media representations and audience responses; and offers a broad discussion of this topic in the context of socio-cultural change, gender politics, and self-identity.

Puberty is a critical time for young adults in forming a positive self-image. They are constantly bombarded with images and comments regarding ideal body types from the media, friends, and family. Through charts and full-color photographs, readers gain information about the subjectivity of beauty standards and the importance of being healthy regardless of body type. The material engages readers and allows them to think critically about the stereotypes they are subjected to. A list of websites is included to offer them assistance in dealing with the pressure of conforming to expectations.

The standard reference for practitioners, researchers, and students, this acclaimed work brings together internationally recognized experts from diverse mental health, medical, and allied health care disciplines. Contributors review established and emerging theories and findings; probe questions of culture, gender, health, and disorder; and present evidence-based assessment, treatment, and prevention approaches for the full range of body image concerns. Capturing the richness and complexity of the field in a readily accessible format, each of the 53 concise chapters concludes with an informative annotated bibliography. New to This Edition *Addresses the most urgent current questions in the field.*Reflects significant advances in key areas: assessment, body image in boys and men, obesity, illness-related body image issues, and cross-cultural research. *Conceptual Foundations section now incorporates evolutionary, genetic, and positive psychology perspectives. *Increased coverage of prevention.

Body image is a significant issue for the majority of adolescents. Anxieties relating to body image can be crippling across both genders, their debilitating effects sometimes leading to mental health problems. This important book is the first of its kind to focus specifically on adolescents, providing a comprehensive overview of the biological, psychological and socio-cultural factors relating to the development of body image. It also provides a detailed review of the measures which can be taken to address body dissatisfaction. Discussing the role of culture, family, peers, schools, sport and media in stimulating a negative body image, the book also examines the different challenges faced by girls and boys as they grow. Eating disorders and body change strategies are also addressed, as well as the challenges faced by youngsters affected by conditions causing visible differences, such as hair loss in cancer patients.The book also presents original research, including the results from a large Australian study of the body image and associated health behaviours of adolescent boys, and the results of a study of current teaching practices relating to body image. Adolescence and Body Image will be ideal reading for students and researchers from a variety of fields, including developmental, health, and social psychology, sociology, and cultural and health studies. Professionals working with young people, whether in education, health promotion or any other allied discipline will also find this book an invaluable resource.

Body image is considered a multi-dimensional concept that includes perceptual, attitudinal, affective, and behavioural dimensions. The definition of body image is the mental picture we have in our minds of the size, shape and form of our bodies and our feelings concerning these characteristics and one's body parts. This book presents topical research data from across the globe in the study of body image, including understanding body image instability and distortion; body image and cancer patients; the advertising media and its contribution to body image problems and dysfunctional eating; alexithymia, body image and eating disorders; sociocultural influences on male body image; body image research in people of African descent; and body image measurement in exercise research, in women with physical disabilities, and in patients undergoing plastic surgery.

The standard reference for practitioners, researchers, and students, this acclaimed work brings together internationally recognized experts from diverse mental health, medical, and allied health care disciplines. Contributors review established and emerging theories and findings; probe questions of culture, gender, health, and disorder; and present evidence-based assessment, treatment, and prevention approaches for the full range of body image concerns. Capturing the richness and complexity of the field in a readily accessible format, each of the 53 concise chapters concludes with an informative annotated bibliography. New to This Edition *Addresses the most urgent current questions in the field. *Reflects significant advances in key areas: assessment, body image in boys and men, obesity, illness-related body image issues, and cross-cultural research. *Conceptual Foundations section now incorporates evolutionary, genetic, and positive psychology perspectives. *Increased coverage of prevention.

Sarah Grogan presents original data from interviews with men, women and children to complement existing research, and provides a comprehensive investigation of cultural influences on body image.

"We've needed a book like Many Mirrors for a long time. In the veritable explosion of new scholarship on the human body, this book stands out in its focus on empirical research. Many Mirrors will move . . . the Anthropology of the Body a giant step forward."--C. H. Browner, University of California at Los Angeles In every society, people define and change their physical appearance in response to their relationships to others: we add clothes and masks, remove them, build up our muscles, perforate our flesh, cut parts away, comb our hair, and modify our diets. In rural Jamaica, fat women are considered desirable; in American suburbia, teenage girls are obsessed with thinness. Bedouin women use tattoos to express their secret longings; Asian American women undergo cosmetic surgery to conform to internalized western standards of beauty. Even with mirrors to see ourselves, we rely on the reactions of others to learn how we look and who we are. Where contemporary Western culture sees the body as a concrete thing with an objective, observable reality, separate from the self, many other societies regard the person as an integrated whole that includes the mind, the body, and the spirit. Through the contributors' studies of individual cultures and through the editor's unifying "body image system", this volume gives us a new conceptual framework for understanding how women and men in any society perceive, describe, and alter their bodies.

Accessible workbook providing new tools and factual information for promoting positive body image in clinical practice or through self-help.