Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
and eating patterns
M.N.A. Akbarruddin, M.S.M. Zahari & Z. Othman
Faculty of Hotel and Tourism Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Malaysia
ABSTRACT: Body internalization is the process by which an individual accepts or internalizes the
image of an ideal body figure captured from various sources namely socio-cultural factors like family,
peers and media thus applies it to the individual self. Body internalization along with some other factors
such awareness of thin ideal and perceived pressures to be thin are significantly related to body image
dissatisfaction. In addition, body image dissatisfaction can also be strong predictors of eating disorder.
This paper reviewing and discusses on the socioculture factors that associate with female students body
internalization, the effect of it on food choices and the eating pattern and relate the specific issue related
to Malaysia context which is under investigtion
Keywords
:
Sociocultural, body internalization, food choices, eating pattern
1 INTRODUCTION
den Berg, Roehrig, Guarda, and Heindberg (2004)
states that when women internalize these pressures
negative consequences can occur. It appears that in
Western countries which have high socioeconomic
levels, the body image dissatisfaction phenomenon
among girls and young women seem to become a
typical matter (McCabe, Ricciardelli & Karantzas,
2010; Halliwell, 2013). Because of that, Lai (2000)
posit that body dissatisfaction is an occurrence
which only applies to Westerners. Furthermore,
there have been cross-cultural studies which indi-
cate higher level of eating pathology and body
image dissatisfaction occurrence in a Western con-
text compare to non-Western societies (Mahmud
& Crittenden, 2007). The study also found that
there is significant culturally related variation in
what constitutes as perfect body appearance. Some
non-Western societies ordinarily regard heavier
body size as the perfect figure while Western
respondents favor thin and slimmer figure (Brewis
& McGarvey, 2000).
However, these presumptions have gradation-
ally been disputed among scholars. Some have
dismissed the notion that body dissatisfaction and
eating pathology as exclusively Western phenom-
enon (Gordon, 2001). Lee and Lee (2000) con-
tended, as non-Westerners are facing fast and rapid
growth in term of socioeconomic, the pressures
exerted by socio-cultural factors such as exposure
to mainstream media and peers that advanced the
notion of thin ideal body would eventually led to
rise in levels of body dissatisfaction.
Body image is a construct with various elements
which mirror how a person thinks, sees, acts
and feels about his outward body appearance
(Humenikova & Gates, 2008). Body image is a
multidimensional effect includes a person's sensa-
tions, awareness, thoughts, feelings, judgments and
behavior of her body. Similarly, body image satis-
faction and dissatisfaction could also be catego-
rized as affective elements of body image since it
point out of the way that people thought and feel
about themselves (Davidson & McCabe, 2006).
In addition, body image could be either a trait in
which it is stable and applicable in any number
of circumstances or a state where it can fluctuate
due to the context or a mood with most of the
researches are focusing on the trait aspect and its
contributors (Colautti, McCabe, Skouteris, Wyett,
Fuller-Tyszkiewicz & Blackburn, 2011). Instead of
having a negative impact toward psychosocial and
health of a person's body image dissatisfaction
can also be a strong predictor of eating disorder
(Stice, 2002). Considerable evidences found that
body dissatisfaction as a predictor of the develop-
ment of eating pathology (Shroff & Thompson,
2006).
Besides body dissatisfaction, research also shown
that the sociocultural model helps to explain disor-
dered eating in which family, peers, and the media
provides pressure for an individual to reach a cer-
tain ideal body image (Stice, 1994). Thompson, van
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