body image research

today you will find me over at brainblogger, with an article on body image research.

here is a short excerpt:

great apes use mirrors to groom themselves, pick food out of their teeth and make faces at themselves for entertainment. but do they also use mirrors to criticize themselves?

female dissatisfaction with appearance and poor body-image begin at a very early age. human infants begin to recognise themselves in mirrors at about 2 years of age. girls can start disliking what they see only a few years later. in one us survey, 81% of ten-year-old girls had already dieted at least once.

black women with high self-esteem and a strong sense of racial identity rated themselves more attractive than pictures of supposedly ‘beautiful’ caucasian fashion models.