Carrie Ortel Journal #3

The Role of Body Image in Women's Mental Health

Anne Marie Cussins

Feminist Review , No. 68, Women and Mental Health (Summer, 2001), pp. 105-114

Published by: Palgrave Macmillan Journals

Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1395747

This source focused on the issue of eating disorders in women, because of body image and social perceptions of what is “beautiful”.  It focused on women living in Britain, and the media that is portrayed to these women, but it also mentioned that the average British women wears a size 14 or above in clothing. The extreme difference between the average size and the size of women with eating disorders makes body image paramount.  The article strengthened my argument about society’s image of beautiful being skewed by models in magazines, but only addressed the effect body image has on women.  Physical health problems brought on my eating disorders were discussed though, which I was happy to see. Many young women are not aware of the permanent health problems faced by malnutrition.   The article made a good point in saying that the models we see show healthy, sexy women, when the reality is that if real women were that size, they would have their health failing in many ways because of malnutrition.  News information is partially the reason for the growing problem of eating disorders, because today even the sports reporters are young beautiful women.  However, more and more awareness on the topic is coming to light, and it is getting pushed to the back burner less and less. 

The author, Anne Marie Cussins, is a doctor in education and psychology, and a professor at University of Michigan.  She is a qualified woman, with interest and much education in the subject.  However, she only focused on women, barely mentioning men at all.  The bias might have been from a personal view as a woman, focusing only on the effects she has encountered.  This article brought to light the international importance of body image.  It is clear everyone worries about how they look, but it is worrying how much people worry, everywhere.  The relationship between mother and daughter was discussed, and caught my interest.  Is there a correlation between being distanced from your mother and bring affected by eating disorders? I am curious if there is a study on this, and it is a good pathway toward more research.  I am also interested in learning more about the other effects of body image on young girls, more than eating disorders, but also self-esteem and confidence, or the ability to form healthy relationships with friends and family.  This article focused on womens body image preferences, and was a good indicator of important issues in that topic, but only addressed the desire for thinness.  There is a strong bias towards women in the article, and it is still a reliable source, it just requires more sources in order to fully report on the issue at hand.  Having detailed information from this article is a good thing, after all some of the most prominent issues based on body image were addressed, even if the whole subject was not discussed. 

M. Janice Gilliland, Michael Windle, Jo Anne Grunbaum, Antronette Yancey, Deanna Hoelscher, Susan R. Tortolero, and Mark A. Schuster

Body Image and Children’s Mental Health Related Behaviors: Results from the Healthy Passages Study

J. Pediatr. Psychol. (2007) 32(1): 30-41 first published online June 14, 2006 doi:10.1093/jpepsy/jsl008

This article is the results of a study done and approved by the CDC, Center for Disease Control and Prevention.  It compares the Body Image Discrepancy(BID) scores for actual verses ideal body image for 650 fifth graders in an elementary school in Texas, along with their parents.  The study showed many interesting results, indicating the different levels of concern of body image between age groups, genders, and races.   Unlike the other article, it addressed the issue of not just thinness, but also muscularity for boys.  The quality of relationship between the child and parent was noted, based on a survey.   A direct correlation between body image satisfaction and few family issues was seen.  The journal recognizes some inconstancies with their data, and addresses them.  This increases my ability to believe this source, because addressing your shortcomings decreases bias, and proves the data to be real.  The journal also addresses past studies, and connects the already known data to the new data collected in their study. There are obvious findings, such as adolescents are more dissatisfied than children with their body image, along with girls more than boys.  However, it also brings up that African American children are more satisfied with larger body structures than other races, and have less problems with body image discrepancy.  While girls are more worried about thinness, boys are more concerned with being muscular and lean at the same time. 

Based on this source, I feel comfortable writing my paper on this topic.  I really gained a lot of knowledge, and it solidified much of what I believed to be true.  With the many authors, I am trusting in the peer review of each other that the article is factual based, because it is much harder to put in false information and get it approved by six other peers than it is to write it by yourself.  The authors take the point of view as the conductors of the study, as well as educated people.  They have a wide variety of people themselves, with a wide range of personal interest.  This allows the article to address many topics within the subject, more than just the common knowledge that teenage girls desire thinness.  The large group of authors eliminates most bias, because they are constantly checking each other’s work and bringing different personal angles on the topic. 

The article stresses on the parental effect on a child body image satisfaction.  There is a strong correlation between children with a negative evaluation of their body size from their parents, and child dissatisfaction with their bodies.  Parental support is an important part of growing up, and without it there are many serious problems that can occur, many more than body image dissatisfaction.  This leads me to want to learn more about if there could be a correlation between siblings and body image satisfaction, because if one child is receiving negative reviews from a parent, chances are another child in the same family is as well. 

This source vilified itself by including data collected in the study.  Graphs and charts were present, solidifying my trust in the information given. Even though the charts are hard to understand, including them made a big difference in my personal evaluation of the source, and allowed me to place my trust in the information given.