نارضایتی از بدن زنان، طبقه اجتماعی و تحرک اجتماعی

Several studies indicate that socially advantaged women are more dissatisfied with their bodies than socially disadvantaged women. These findings have been based on women's current social class, and no attention has been paid to the social class of her family of origin or to intergenerational social mobility. In the present research 912 54-year-old women from a prospective birth cohort study provided self-report data on current body esteem (appearance and weight dimensions). Childhood and adult social class (manual versus non-manual) were defined based on father's occupation and own or partner's occupation, respectively. This information and the highest educational qualifications recorded by age 26 were gathered prospectively. Indicators of current and adolescent body mass index (BMI) were computed from height and weight values collected at ages 15 (or 11) and 53–54 years. Multiple regression was used to examine the relationship between midlife body esteem and childhood social class, adult social class, educational qualifications, and social mobility, unadjusted and adjusted for BMI. Women from the non-manual classes as adults were more dissatisfied with their weight than women from the manual classes as adults, for a given BMI. Adjusting for BMI, downwardly mobile women were more satisfied with their appearance than stable non-manual women. Adjusting for BMI, higher educational qualifications were associated with more dissatisfaction with weight and with appearance, and education appears to be more important than occupationally defined social class in explaining body dissatisfaction. A clearer understanding of the relationship between socio-economic position and body dissatisfaction demands that the following distinctions are made: weight versus appearance satisfaction, education versus occupation, and current social class versus intergenerational social mobility.

In general, research has demonstrated that for a given body size, socio-economically advantaged women are more dissatisfied with or concerned about their bodies than socio-economically disadvantaged women (Ogden & Thomas, 1999; Wardle & Griffith, 2001). An explanation concerns the role of thinness as a marker of social distinction in industrialised society (Bordo, 1993), which makes it more likely to be valued by individuals higher on the socio-economic spectrum. Sociological authors have highlighted social class differences in the extent to which investment in and control over the body is considered a ‘project’ worthy of time and effort (Bourdieu, 1984), a perspective which predicts that socio-economically advantaged individuals are more likely to aspire to, and invest effort in attaining a particular bodily appearance (which at the present time is thin).