Body Image and Obesity in Adulthood

Abstract

The body image concerns of obese individuals first were described in the late 1960s [1]. Initially, body image disturbance was thought to be limited to persons who experienced a prepubescent onset of obesity, those who received negative appearance evaluations from parents and siblings, and those with the presence of an emotional disturbance. After 25 years of relatively little discussion, the last decade has witnessed a dramatic growth in empirical attention to the relationship between body image and obesity [2,3]