The relationship of sex and sexual orientation to self-esteem, body shape satisfaction, and eating disorder symptomatology

Abstract

There is increasing interest in understanding what role, if any, sex and sexual orientation play in body dissatisfaction, its correlates to distress, and its relationship to disordered eating. The goals of the present study were to examine: (a) differences in sex and sexual orientation in internalization of societal pressure to modify physical appearance, components of body image dissatisfaction, self-esteem, and eating disorder symptomatology and (b) whether the internalization-eating disorder symptomatology was mediated by the different components of body image dissatisfaction and low self-esteem. The present data support several key trends in the literature: men generally reported less body dissatisfaction, internalization of socio-cultural standards of beauty, drive for thinness, and disordered eating, but a greater drive for muscularity than women; results also indicated that different components of body image dissatisfaction and low self-esteem partially mediated the relationship between internalization and eating disorder symptomatology. Gay men reported significantly more body dissatisfaction, internalization, eating disorder symptomatology, drive for thinness, and drive for muscularity than heterosexual men. Compared to heterosexual women, lesbians reported increased drive for muscularity, lower self-esteem, and lower internalization; however, they did not significantly differ on body dissatisfaction, drive for thinness or disordered eating. Correlation coefficients between body shape dissatisfaction and several aspects of mental distress were significantly larger for gay men than heterosexual men; the same coefficients did not differ between lesbian women and heterosexual women. Results of path analyses indicated that the relationship between internalization and disordered eating differs for gay and heterosexual men but not for lesbian and heterosexual women. These results call attention to lesbians as a generally understudied population.

The Relationship between (binge) Eating and Identity Issues in Pre-bariatric Patients

“…This finding confirms previous research, which shows that dieting is more common in women than in men [57][58][59][60]. The high prevalence of dieting behavior in females is also linked to the role of the media, which promotes the (unrealistic) thin body ideal for women, and the (unrealistic) athletic body for men, which may drive women to dieting (and binge eating, if they lose control) and men even to the use anabolic steroids to reach this body ideal [61,62]. Furthermore, the positive correlation between restraint eating and identity synthesis can be driven by the fact that identity synthesis is related to a higher level of conscientiousness.…”

Fat and lean tissue accretion in relation to reward motivation in children

“…Further, social factors may play a role. An example is the higher internalization of societal pressure to modify physical appearance, the higher body dissatisfaction and the higher drive for thinness in females compared to males (Yean et al, 2013). These factors compose a risk to develop disordered eating behavior via increases in weight control intentions (Stice & Shaw, 2002).…”

The Social Appearance Anxiety Scale in Italian Adolescent Populations: Construct Validation and Group Discrimination in Community and Clinical Eating Disorders Samples

“…As the design of our studies precludes long term examination of the stability of the SAAS and of ME/I over time, future studies need to address these issues. How the SAAS affects additional specific behaviours that are associated with concerns about appearance (i.e., compulsive exercising, or anabolic steroid use [76][77][78][79][80][81][82]) needs to be also elucidated. Finally, in this work the DSM-IV criteria for EDs and SAD [28] were used as data were collected before the official publication of the DSM-5 [83].…”