Theoretical Framework
A person's views, ideas, and emotions regarding their body are all included into the
multifaceted, subjective, and dynamic concept of body image. Body image encompasses more than
just a person's physical appearance; it also takes into account that person's sexual orientation, level
of talent, and physical and mental health. Despite remaining mostly unchanged in some situations,
body image does change with time such as specific age vulnerabilities and variations after media
exposure or health status alterations being highlighted by longitudinal and experimental studies.
Body image doesn't only mirror the person's genetic origin or the opinions of their close friends
and family. While these elements may affect the level of body satisfaction, the individual's
perspective and judgment of his or her own body ultimately determines the result. The overall
outcome is influenced by a person's personality, sense of self-worth, interpersonal relationships
such as family, friends, and media messages, biological characteristics and cultural aspects of
social values and norms. It is important to study further about Body Appreciation, Body Image or
such as Body Dissatisfaction to determine the level of its impact on a student's Self Esteem. This
theoretical framework will provide a background into Body Appreciation, which will help to
examine and identify the different factors that might influence an individual's well being
emotionally, physically and psychologically.
According to various scholars (such as Cash, 2002; Cash, Jakatdar, & Williams, 2004;
Thompson, Heinberg, Altabe, & Tantleff-Dunn, 1999) contend that body image is a complex,
multidimensional construct that includes one's self-perceptions and attitudes (i.e., thoughts,
feelings, and behaviors) with regard to the body. It entails several distinct but connected elements,
including but not limited to appearance assessment, appearance orientation, self-esteem, and size
perception accuracy (Thompson et al., 1999). Despite the fact that these elements may be both
positive and negative, much of the existing research on body image has been pathology-focused
determining the level to which people have a negative outlook about their bodies (Cash, 2002).
Many women hold negative perceptions about their bodies, which result from an selfperception (i.e., observations, thoughts, and views) appear to differ on one's initial physical
appearance (for example, Heider et al., 2015) and ideals of attractiveness, is often referred to as
body dissatisfaction. Most female college students experience body dissatisfaction. High levels of
student unhappiness are linked to eating disorders including anorexia, bulimia nervosa, and binge
eating (Brockmeyer et al., 2018). Body dissatisfaction can have a significant impact on the
development of women's eating disorders since it frequently coexists with them. lives (Cho & Lee,
2013). (Cho & Lee, 2013).
Studies on body dissatisfaction have typically concentrated on female populations.
However, recent data indicates that there is a considerable and increasing rate of body
dissatisfaction in the male population (Adams, Turner, & Bucks, 2005; Frederick et al., 2007;
McCabe & Ricciardelli, 2004; Watkins, Christie, & Chally, 2008). For example, Frederick et al.
(2007) found that among four significant samples of male undergraduates in the United States, 51–
71% were unhappy with their level of body fat and 90% wanted to gain more muscle. Concerns
about male body weight and form are also male eating disorders and other body- and weightrelated illnesses may have a different psychopathology than females (Darcy et al., 2012; S.
C.Stanford & Lemberg, 2012). Muscularity and masculinity are crucial factors for men when
expressing body dissatisfaction (Pope, Phillips, & Olivardia, 2000).
Body Appreciation
The Body Appreciation Scale (BAS), a trait-level assessment of positive body image that
is widely used (Avalos et al., 2005; Tylka & Wood-Barcalow, 2015). The BAS was initially
updated with items that represent the additional notions of (a) widely defining beauty, (b) body
acceptance, and (c) an inner optimism that impacts outward attitude, in addition to the three
elements of positive body image defined by Menzel and Levine (2011). The BAS, according to
researchers, measures the higher order idea of good body image (2015) Halliwell. The scale's
unidimensional component structure has been thoroughly studied in Western samples, which
supports this paradigm (Avalos et al., 2005; Lobera & Ros, 2011; Hadji-Michael, Swami, et al.,
2008).
Social Media and Body Image
Mass media is a significant contributor to the rise of body dissatisfaction since it advertises
ideal beauty standards in a variety of ways (Cho & Lee, 2013; Thompson et al., 1999). With the
development of technology and new media, study has more lately concentrated on Internet and
social media exposure impacts that are detrimental. Youth usage of social media is pervasive and
has been linked to issues with body image. Pew Research Center, 89% of teenagers use the internet
and 95% of them have access to a smartphone a few times every day (Anderson & Jiang, 2018).
According to Villanti and colleagues (2017), 85% of young adults (ages 18 to 24) regularly use
six or more social media sites, with 97.5% of them using at least one. Poorer body image outcomes
in adult women and adolescent girls have been associated to online time and exposure to social
media sites like Facebook and Instagram (Fardouly et al., 2015; Fardouly & Vartanian, 2015;
Slater et al., 2017, Tiggemann & Slater, 2013). Although "screen time" has received the majority
of attention in the past (Fardouly & Vartanian, 2016), mounting data suggests that subjective social
media experiences, rather than merely usage frequency, are what are actually driving this link
(Wood-Barcalow et al., 2010; Smith et al., 2013). The focus on frequency of usage (i.e., "screen
time") must be replaced with consideration of the nature of social media, according to a growing
consensus among social media academics.
experiences (see Granic et al., 2020; Keles et al., 2020; Marino, 2018; Odgers & Jensen, 2020).
(see Granic et al., 2020; Keles et al., 2020; Marino, 2018; Odgers & Jensen, 2020). The
appearance-focused social media that contributes to a misimpression of one's own physique and
low self-esteem can cause appearance-related concern (Dignard & Jarry, 2021). Theoretically, the
selective presentation of the most attractive images that have been altered and filtered, a process
that is popular on social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter, may prejudice viewers
opinions of others' accomplishment and users' attention on their looks emphasize (Perloff, 2014;
Tiggemann & Slater, 2014). In response, a lot of women put excessive pressure on themselves to
develop an unrealistic image, which can lead to low self-esteem. People may use social media
platforms like Instagram and Twitter to share their opinions and gain the attention of friends,
family, and complete strangers. The usage of hashtags unites online communities with similar
interests. Hashtags like "#thinspiration" draw users who want motivation to lose weight or keep
their weight low, yet articles on thinspiration pages may harm body image by pushing an
unattainable thin ideal (Dignard & Jarry, 2021).
Fitspiration
The "fitspiration" trend has been promoted by certain social media influencers in an effort
to encourage a more positive body image and divert attention from the obsession with extreme
thinness. Fitspiration claims to be distinct from thinspiration in that it prefers to encourage physical
fitness, strength development, and good eating to extreme thinness and undereating. But content
analysis indicates the emphasis on looks, stigmatization of being overweight, and normalizing of
dieting are among the messages found in fitspiration blogs and articles, which are comparable to
those found on thinspiration websites and dietary restrictions (Boepple & Thompson, 2016;
Boepple et al., 2016). Women who post fitspo images ranked much higher on the urges for
thinness, bulimia, drive for muscularity, and obsessive exercise than those who post trip photos,
according to research by Holland and Tiggemann (2017). Similar to this, Watkins (2018) looked
at participants looking at landscape or fitspirational photographs. Fitspiration viewers showed
greater levels of body dissatisfaction and a larger preference for phrases with a bodily connotation.
Images of exceptionally thin and muscular female bodies are prevalent in the fitspiration trend on
social media. According to the social discrepancy theory, seeing fitspo boosts women's desires for
leaner, more muscular bodies and has been linked to an increase in body dissatisfaction
(Tiggemann & Zaccardo, 2015). (Arya & Rai, 2018; Dignard & Jarry, 2021; Tiggemann &
Zaccardo, 2015).
Positive Body Image
In the past, research has tended to concentrate more on the causes and antecedents of
negative body image and dissatisfaction. Despite being a relatively newer area of body image
study, research on positive body image is constantly expanding. Some studies claim that a
favorable body image and a poor body image are two different things. In other words, there is not
a continuous between having a favorable or negative body image (Tylka & Wood-Barcalow,
2015). The three distinguishing features of a positive body image, according to Menzel and Levine
(2011), are (a) appreciation of the body's shape and function, (b) salience of and attentiveness to
the body's needs and experiences, and (c) preserving a protective cognitive style for processing
body-related messages. In contrast to those for negative body image, these lower order aspects of
positive body image are less well known and have not undergone as much scientifically valid
testing (Halliwell, 2015).