1. The Health Problem: Body Satisfaction
Body satisfaction is a prevalent social determinant of health in Western society. Negative body satisfaction is defined as an individual’s view of their own body size concerning weight and shape (Carter, Forrest, & Kaida, 2017). Negative body satisfaction is linked to mental and physical health conditions such as depression and obesity, and is a critical contributor to life-threatening eating disorders (Grabe & Ward, 2008). A higher prevalence of negative body satisfaction has been found in adolescents and young adults, as well as women in general (Bucchianeri et al., 2013). Many social factors have been shown to influence body satisfaction such as obesity, media, gender, social pressure, physical activity. For this study, we chose to focus on the relationship between body satisfaction and physical activity among students at Quest University Canada. Past studies have found a link between body satisfaction and physical activity with factors such as weight and motivation to participate in physical activity playing a large role in how people viewed their bodies (LePage & Crowther, 2010). Furthermore, studies indicate that there is a correlation between body self-consciousness and amount of time spent engaging in physical activity (Sabiston et al., 2010). In this study, we explored how time spent exercising, time one’s social group spent exercising, and self-consciousness while using campus exercise facilities influence body satisfaction. We hypothesised that individuals who spend more time exercising are more likely to have greater body satisfaction; individuals who are more physically active than their social circles are more likely to have greater body satisfaction; and those who feel less self-conscious when using the campus exercise facilities are more likely to have greater body satisfaction.
1.1 Historical factors
Body satisfaction is directly linked to social expectations of what an ideal body “should” be (Stice, Maxfield, & Wells, 2003). Often, these expectations are gendered and racialized, requiring men and women to achieve different body ideals to gain social acceptance (Derenne and Beresin, 2006), and preferring skin colours with certain body associations over others (Hesse-Biber et al., 2006; Viruelle-Fuentes et al., 2012). Men are often under-represented in academic discourse concerning body satisfaction. This may be attributed to a cultural notion that women are most explicitly affected by the cultural pressure of fitting the body norms that dominate the retail and media industry (Courtenay, 2000; Dworkin and Messner, 2002). Ideologies of the perfect body have also changed over time. In the early days of European colonialism, fatness was an indication of wealth and was thus respected as beautiful (Forth, 2013). In stark contrast, 21st century North American culture idealizes thin bodies (Lamb et al., 1993) and fatness or being overweight is medicalized and stigmatized (Chang and Christakis 2002; Schwartz et al., 2003 ). Although feminist body positivity movements support the reclamation of beauty for bodies that don’t fit the “norm”, thinness is still what is socially acceptable in the Western world (Sastre, 2014). As a result of these historical trends, people in Western society face social pressures to conform or change that affect self-perception and consequently, body satisfaction.
1.2 Cultural factors
The Western body concept idealizing thinness is perpetuated through media, reverberating through various broadcast channels to affect consumers. Media consumption–both in the form of passive media and online social media–has been shown to increased body dissatisfaction (Grabe & Ward, 2008; Tiggemann, 2003; Carter, Forrest, & Kaida, 2017). Through this cultural inundation, young people are lead to internalize a value system dependent thinness and the effort to achieve thinness (Garvin & Damson, 2008). As a result, the fitness industry has been growing in success (Chekhovska, 2017) and cultural ideals of “good bodies” have begun to encompass exercise habits of individuals or their social groups (Grabe & Ward, 2008).
College students are a prime cohort for examining body satisfaction and physical activity routines. Starting college or university often requires adjustments in one’s lifestyle to accommodate an intense workload. Students may also experience intense social and financial pressures which can contribute to stress and subsequently lead to weight gain (CITATION for stress and weight gain). In a study on body image and body satisfaction among college freshman, Simmons et al. (2011) explored the “Freshman 15” concept. They also found that weight is a significant determinant of body satisfaction and concluded that body image is a fundamental component of emotional, social and academic adjustment among university students. Quest University Canada is located in Squamish, BC – the outdoor recreation capital of Canada. Quest’s location arguably entices students to campus that enjoy outdoor recreation and subsequently physical activity, which makes it a significant component of Quest’s student body culture.
1.3 Structural factors
Western cultural ideals are perpetuated by a sociopolitical climate dominated by neoliberal ideals which perpetuate capitalism. Through capitalism, power structures are enforced to determine which bodies are more acceptable in dominant Western practice.
Capitalism is a structural force with the goal of growth and profit (Friedman, 1962). Many industries have found success in this system through perpetuating various body ideals to sell a consumer a product that will help people change how they look (Wilson & Blackhurst, 1999). There are several multi-billion-dollar industries focused specifically on bodies, cosmetics, surgery, dieting, and exercising to name a few (Thompson & Hirschman, 1995). Outside of body-focused industries, capitalism divides people based on their participatory identities as producers or consumers, where consumers rely on the producers, thus unequally distributing power to the supply side of the market (Harvey, 2003). In a Western context, this means that people accrue market power based on the financial outcomes of social success, which is often dictated in large part by social acceptability (Elliot and Smith 2004). A hegemonically “normal” or idealized body has advantage in this system, and thus the bodies in power continue to reinforce the culturally preferred ideals through their positions of power.
Consumer citizens under capitalism reinforce ideologies among one another in accepted practices of neoliberal ideology (Peck and Tickell, 2002). As a result of this social structure, individuals are held responsible for their own health through their choices (eg. Olson et al, 2016), marginalized bodies even more so (Lawson, 2007). Such patterns reverberate through to the health-care system, where notions of wellbeing often equate health with thinness (Teachman and Brownell, 2001). Individual responsibility for body presentation, therefore, has become a key societal indication of value. Thus, body satisfaction can be considered a representation of how a person embodies these societal pressures.
2. Methods
This study collected data through a survey which was distributed to the entire Quest University community via email. The survey was hosted by Survey Monkey, and data was removed from the server when the survey phase was done after two days. For the purpose of this specific study, a subset of data was used including only students. Respondents who indicated they were “staff”, “faculty”, or “not applicable” were excluded and responses left blank were removed from the data set, resulting in 189 participants. Participation was voluntary but completed surveys earned participants optional entry to a prize draw upon completion, a method shown to be effective in increasing engagement and participation in research studies (Prize-Draw.com, 2024). Some surveys were administered with an interviewer but most were completed individually online. Four questions asked about (1) body satisfaction, (2) amount of time spent engaging with physical activity on average per week (3) how much physical activity participants’ social groups engaged in and how this compared to their own level of physical activity, and (4) how often participants felt self-conscious using the campus facilities. The health outcome for this study was how satisfied participants were with their body in relationship to variables of physical activity, participants’ own physical activity compared to their peers, and self-consciousness when engaging in exercise at campus facilities. Another factor that was considered was gender and its relationship to body satisfaction. By exploring the relationship between time spent engaging in physical activity and how satisfied one is with their body we hoped to find a direct correlation between the two.
3. Findings
3.1 Baseline Characteristics
Of the 189 Quest students who participated in this study, most identified as cisgender women (66.0%), versus cisgender men (30%) or other genders (4%). We observed variation in the reported levels of body satisfaction. For instance, only 10.5% of participants reported feeling ‘very satisfied’ with the way their body looked. Another 32.0% reported ‘satisfied,’ whereas 28.0% of participants reported ‘dissatisfied’ or ‘very dissatisfied’. We also observed variation in the amount of time participants spent exercising per week in the past three months. The highest proportion of participants (33.0%) reported engaging in 4 – 7 hours of intentional physical activity in the past 3 months, whereas <1 hour of intentional physical activity was reported by 9.5% of participants. The same proportion (9.5%) of participants reported 12 or more hours of intentional physical activity per week in the past 3 months. Most participants (96.3%) were familiar with how much time they spent engaging in intentional physical activity compared to those in their social circle. The highest proportion of participants (33.0%) reported in engaging in about the same amount of intentional physical activity, whereas fewer participants reported in engaging in a lot less (10.1%) or a lot more (6.9%) intentional physical activity. In terms of self-consciousness, 19.1% of participants reported ‘not applicable’ because they did not use the campus exercise facilities in the past 3 months. The majority of people who did use the campus exercise facilities (70.4%) reported at least occasional feelings of self-consciousness while using the exercise facilities in the past three months. Table 1 shows the baseline characteristics of this population and social determinants of health including gender, time spent exercising, time spent exercising compared to one’s social circle, and feelings of self-consciousness in the campus exercise facilities.
Table 1. Baseline Characteristics Among Students at Quest University Canada: Social Determinants of Health Survey February 2018 (n=189)
| Variables | n (%) |
|---|---|
| Health Outcome | |
| Body Satisfaction | |
| – Very satisfied | 19 (10.5) |
| – Satisfied | 58 (32.0) |
| – Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied | 53 (29.3) |
| – Dissatisfied | 46 (25.4) |
| – Very dissatisfied | 5 (2.8) |
| Social Determinants of Health | |
| Gender | |
| – Cis-woman | 124 (66.0) |
| – Cis-man | 56 (30.0) |
| – Other | 8 (4.0) |
| Time spent engaging in intentional physical activity (per week in the past 3 months), in hours | |
| – None/<1 | 18 (9.5) |
| – 1-3 | 53 (28.2) |
| – 4-7 | 62 (33.0) |
| – 8-11 | 37 (19.7) |
| – 12+ | 18 (9.5) |
| Time spent engaging in intentional physical activity (in the past 3 months), compared to social circle | |
| – A lot less | 19 (10.1) |
| – Less activity | 38 (20.2) |
| – The same | 62 (33.0) |
| – More activity | 49 (26.1) |
| – A lot more activity | 13 (6.9) |
| – I don’t know | 7 (3.7) |
| Self-consciousness felt (in the past 3 months) while using the Quest campus exercise facilities | |
| – Not applicable | 35 (19.1) |
| – Rarely/never | 45 (24.1) |
| – Occasionally | 54 (28.9) |
| – Often | 34 (18.2) |
| – All the time | 19 (10.2) |
Table 2. Bivariable Associations with Body Satisfaction and Dissatisfaction Among Students at Quest University Canada (n=189)
| Body Satisfaction | Positive | Negative | Neutral | P value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gender | n (%) | n (%) | n (%) | |
| – Cis-woman | 34 (31.5) | 35 (32.4) | 39 (36.1) | 0.2721 |
| – Cis-man | 22 (47.8) | 12 (26.1) | 12 (26.1) | |
| – Other | <5 | <5 | <5 | |
| Time spent engaging in intentional physical activity (per week in the past 3 months), in hours | 0.3995 | |||
| – 0-3 hrs/week | 16 (26.7) | 21 (35.0) | 23 (38.3) | |
| – 4-7 hrs/week | 24 (44.4) | 15 (27.8) | 15 (27.8) | |
| – 8+ hrs/week | 18 (37.5) | 15 (31.3) | 15 (31.3) | |
| Time spent engaging in intentional physical activity (in the past 3 months), compared to social circle | 0.3208 | |||
| – Less activity | 15 (30.6) | 16 (32.7) | 18 (36.7) | |
| – The same | 20 (37.0) | 14 (25.9) | 20 (37.0) | |
| – More activity | 21 (40.4) | 20 (38.5) | 11 (21.2) | |
| Self-consciousness felt (in the past 3 months) while using the Quest campus exercise facilities | 0.4402 | |||
| – Rarely/never | 18 (48.6) | 7 (18.9) | 12 (32.4) | |
| – Occasionally | 14 (31.1) | 14 (31.1) | 17 (37.8) | |
| – Often | 13 (41.9) | 11 (35.5) | 7 (22.6) |
3.2 Patterns of Intentional Physical Activity and Self Consciousness by Body Satisfaction
Table 2 shows the patterns of social determinants of health by body satisfaction. The overall prevalence of positive body satisfaction among cis-gender women in our sample was 31.5%, whereas 47.8% of cis-gender men reported positive body satisfaction. Furthermore, more of the cisgender women in the sample (32.4%) reported negative body satisfaction compared to men (36.1%). In general, participants who spent 4 to 7 hours engaging in intentional physical activity reported the highest body satisfaction (44.0%). Moreover, participants who reported spending more time engaging in intentional physical activity relative to their social circle had the highest prevalence of positive body satisfaction (40.4%), compared to those who reported less (37.0%) or the same (30.6%) amount of intentional physical activity as those in their social circle. For those who often felt self-conscious in the campus exercise facilities, 35.5% reported negative body image, compared to just 31.1% of those saying ‘occasionally’ and 18.9% of those saying ‘rarely/never’.
3.3 Association Between Intentional Physical Activity, Self Consciousness and Body Satisfaction
According to the P values listed in Table 2, we found no significant relationship between body satisfaction and our three social determinants of health (intentional physical activity, intentional physical activity compared to one’s social circle, and experiences of self-consciousness when using the campus exercise facilities). However, our small sample size (n=189) may have precluded us from detecting a significant association.
4. Critical Factors
Our data do not show a significant correlation between our variables related to physical activity and body satisfaction. Our sample size may account for this, or our findings could indicate that body satisfaction is influenced by a multitude of societal factors, rather than an individual’s exercise habits alone. Therefore, instead of interventions focused on physical activity to improve body satisfaction, we suggest interventions that focus on shifting Western cultural body ideals and creating supportive environments to promote body satisfaction.
If we can work to dismantle enculturated notions of the “ideal” body, it is likely that the number of people who feel satisfied with their bodies will increase as a result, leading to improved mental and emotional wellbeing. Changes in media representation can help to deconstruct hegemonic social ideologies, for example. Interpersonally, a culture shift away from judging one another for body presentation would decrease stigma drastically, but is difficult for a group to implement. More holistic school health programs that promote healthy body awareness could be a realistic beginning to a social intervention in this case.
State-level policy change is unlikely to result in a deconstruction of the capitalist neoliberalism that perpetuates negative body perceptions, but considering our research, we suggest that that moves away from a neoliberal state could positively affect this health outcome. Other policy changes could include funding for more diverse media representation, policy requiring diverse body presentation in hiring practices, and body sensitivity training for medical professionals.