Fiction, Fashion, and Function: An Introduction to the Special Issue on Gendered Body Image, Part I

In this special issue, we showcase innovative research demonstrating the process by which gendered experiences of the body constrain and impact body image. In this first volume, we organized the papers into three research streams that highlight this process. The first stream explores the link between social and/or interpersonal experiences of objectification and body-related self-perceptions and behaviors. The second stream explores different media sources and messages as potent transmitters of gendered body ideals. The third stream calls attention to the wider cultural prescriptions for attractive and acceptable bodies across gender, race, and age—and how body image may shift according to these more specific prescriptions. This issue concludes with a discussion of these papers within the context of objectification theory.