Body Image

Body image, or how you feel about your body and appearance, is a complex phenomenon. How you feel about your body is primarily influenced by your individual physical health and mental well-being, but it's also affected by family, societal and cultural factors. 

If you are physically healthy and active, it is easier to trust your body to work well for you. Paradoxically, it is also easy to take a healthy body for granted, to forget to appreciate all the impressive things the body does in every day. Our vision, taste, hearing, movement, thinking all rely on finely tuned biochemical and physiological functioning that is quite amazing.

If you feel good about yourself psychologically, chances are you will feel positive about your body. However, sometimes stress, anxiety, self-criticism, or a low sense of self-worth can interfere with how you feel about and treat your body. These feelings occur in everyone, but if they intensify and go unchecked, they can impair your sense of wellbeing and ability to take good care of yourself.

Where do you fit? 

The eating and body image continuum describes a range of feelings you may experience about your body.

Body image is also by influenced societal and cultural factors. Each society creates standards of appearance or beauty particular to the place and time. It’s important to realize that the more value you give to societal standards, the more influence they have on your body image. In other words, if you give societal standards much value, then you may begin to judge your own body according to those standards.

In contemporary society in most developed countries, social pressure on body image is highly related to body weight and shape. For women, the “perfect body” often translates to an impossibly thin or impossibly voluptuous figure. For men, the societal message often promotes an unattainable ideal of muscular build, leanness, or both.

We all want to look and feel our best, but appearance is not always linked to weight, and healthy bodies come in all shapes and sizes. Developing and nurturing a positive body image and a healthy mental attitude is crucially important to wellbeing.  

Considering the busy life Cornell students lead, it can be a challenge to find time to eat and exercise and right, not to mention handle stress. The Cornell Healthy Eating Program provides information, resources, and strategies relating to body image and eating.  

Additional resources

• About Face provides a critical view of the portrayal of women in the media.

• The Body Positive strives to improve body image among teens.

• The National Eating Disorders Association has a website as well as information and referral hotline (800) 931-2237.

• The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance is an activist group that supports size acceptance.

• More resources on this website