Title

Empowerment And Powerlessness: A Closer Look At The Relationship Between Feminism, Body Image And Eating Disturbance

Keywords

Body image; Eating disorders; Empowerment; Feminism; Prevention

Abstract

Objectification Theory (Frederickson & Roberts, 1997) states that women's bodies are viewed as objects to be evaluated and this societal objectification may lead to self-objectification when women view their own bodies as objects. The current study theorized that empowerment is an important factor in reducing self-objectification. Although empowerment is a central tenet of feminist theory, this study is the first to examine the relationship between empowerment, feminism, and body image and eating disturbance. Participants were 276 women from the southeastern USA. Results demonstrated that empowerment was more predictive of body image and eating disturbance than was feminism. Development of a validated empowerment scale specific to body image and eating disturbance may be useful for future research, prevention, and treatment efforts. © 2007 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.

Publication Date

5-1-2008

Publication Title

Sex Roles

Volume

58

Issue

9-10

Number of Pages

639-648

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-007-9377-z

Socpus ID

42149177955 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/42149177955

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