Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Body Image In Adult Women: Moving Beyond The Younger Years, Lisa S. Kilpela, Carolyn Becker, Nicole Wesley, Tiffany Stewart

Psychology Faculty Research

In spite of copious literature investigating body dissatisfaction and its correlates in adolescents and young adult women, exploration of body image disturbances in adult women remains an underrepresented domain in the literature. Yet, there are many reasons to suspect that body image in adult women may both differ from and possibly be more complex than that of younger women. Adult women face myriad factors influencing body image beyond those delineated in the body image literature on adolescents and young adult women. For instance, ageing-related physiological changes shift the female body further away from the thin-young-ideal, which is the societal standard …

I’M Not Just Fat, I’M Old: Has The Study Of Body Image Talk Overlooked “Old Talk?”, Carolyn Becker, Phillippa C. Diedrichs, G. Jankowski, Chelsey Werchan

Psychology Faculty Research

Background: Research indicates that body dissatisfaction is correlated with and often predictive of both physical and mental health problems. “Fat talk,” a well-studied form of body image talk in adolescents and university-aged women, has been implicated as contributing to body dissatisfaction and mediating the relationship between body dissatisfaction and other mental health problems. Limited research, however, has investigated fat talk across the female lifespan. Further, consistent with most body image research, fat talk research solely focuses on the thin dimension of idealized female attractiveness, even though other dimensions may contribute to body dissatisfaction in women.

Method: The current study investigated …