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Femininity and Body Image: Promoting Positive Body Image in the ‘Culture of Slenderness’

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Book cover Contested Bodies of Childhood and Youth

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Abstract

Slimness is generally seen as a desirable attribute for girls and young women in prosperous western cultures. Being slender is associated with self-control, elegance, social attractiveness and youth, and girls as young as five aspire to a slender ideal (Grogan 2008). The adult ideal is epitomised in the slim but full-breasted figure of actors and models such as Angelina Jolie and Elle MacPherson — the body type that Marchessault (2000: 204) describes as ‘the physically impossible, tall, thin and busty Barbie-doll stereotype’. Muscle tone is also important, and the feminine ideal in the 2000s is a firm-looking, toned body (Bordo 2003). Researchers from psychology, sociology and gender studies have shown that body image is socially constructed and that maintaining a positive body image in cultures that specify a narrow range of acceptable body types can be a challenge. This chapter aims to investigate what we know about body image in western cultures, where a slender body type is idealised, and proposes ways of promoting positive body image in girls and young women. As such it will provide a complementary, primarily psychological, approach to other perspectives on contested bodies of children and youth presented in this text.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Staffordshire University, UK

    Sarah Grogan (Professor of Health Psychology)

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  1. Sarah Grogan
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Durham, UK

    Kathrin Hörschelmann (lecturer in human geography) & Rachel Colls (lecturer in human geography) (lecturer in human geography) &  (lecturer in human geography)

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© 2010 Sarah Grogan

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Grogan, S. (2010). Femininity and Body Image: Promoting Positive Body Image in the ‘Culture of Slenderness’. In: Hörschelmann, K., Colls, R. (eds) Contested Bodies of Childhood and Youth. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230274747_3

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