Images of body weight among young men and women: evidence from Beirut, Lebanon

• adolescents
• body mass index
• body weight
• gender
• Lebanon

• AUB, American University of Beirut
• SIBER, surveillance and intervention for behavioral risk factors survey

In Arab society, plumpness was traditionally considered a trait of feminine perfection. Not now, and an increasing proportion of Lebanese adolescents considers thinness a marker of female beauty. Once a Western phenomenon, extreme thinness is now valued by young urban women almost everywhere, largely because of the propagation of thin models by the global media, satellite dishes, and fashion industries. Such a global trend has serious health consequences, including eating disorders and mental illness. Previous studies conducted in the UK have shown that women with a “normal” weight were more likely than men to consider themselves overweight.1 Furthermore, this gender gap in weight related concerns among adolescents increased with age.2 Do these conclusions hold true in a developing country’s context?

The purpose of this paper is to investigate patterns of, and gender differences in, perception of body image as compared with actual body mass index among adolescents in a “transnational” college—the American University of Beirut—of a developing country. This study extends previous community based research on gender differences in self perception of body weight to include various measures of socioeconomic status of adolescents in a context very different from that of previous studies.