Body Dissatisfaction among Female

University Students: Metacognitive

Awareness
Sonali De & Rituparna Chakraborty

Psychological Studies
ISSN 0033-2968
Volume 60
Number 3
Psychol Stud (2015) 60:257-264
DOI 10.1007/s12646-015-0326-6

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Author's personal copy

Psychol Stud (JulySeptember 2015) 60(3):257264
DOI 10.1007/s12646-015-0326-6

RESEARCH IN PROGRESS

Body Dissatisfaction among Female University Students:

Metacognitive Awareness
Sonali De 1 & Rituparna Chakraborty 1

Received: 9 January 2015 / Accepted: 14 July 2015 / Published online: 7 August 2015
# National Academy of Psychology (NAOP) India 2015

Abstract This study intended to explore the subsistence of

body image dissatisfaction among young female university
students, their locus of control and their metacognitive knowledge about their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with their body.
Thirty female university students (age ranged 2124 years)
participated in the study. Assessment through a screening information schedule confirmed all participants being of
normal-weight category (BMI 18.5 to 24.9) on the BMI scale
without any present or past diagnosis of eating disorder. The
results demonstrated prevalence of body dissatisfaction
among majority of participants, who were also seen to have
less metacognitive awareness than the rest.
Keywords Body image . Metacognition . Media influence

Introduction
In contemporary societies, young adults encounter a number
of issues while taking on responsibilities of adulthood and
they are Busually preoccupied with self-growth in the context
of society and relationships with others^ (Birch 1997). In this
endeavor body plays an imperative role. It is that component
of human existence, which the individual cant elect to choose
(Annas 1998), yet that demarcates our identity: Who am I,
who are we? From bodily interaction, human social practices
come into live form.
* Sonali De
sonalide2002@yahoo.com
Rituparna Chakraborty
crituparna02@yahoo.in
1

Department of Psychology, University of Calcutta, 92, Acharya

Prafulla Chandra Rd, Kolkata 700009, India

During young adulthood, the healthiest phase of life

(Zastrow and Kirst-Ashman 2009), Indian women were noted
to become overly conscious about their appearance (Shroff
and Thompson 2004). In Indian societies it is customary that
the girls get married during this age, and thus corporeal appearance becomes quite important not only to them, but to
their family too as the decision of marriage and the event itself,
both are largely a family affair. Apart from marriage, in most
social spaces women are mostly classified by their physical
look. This cultural prototype is so pervasive that women typify their own worth by how they appear. Individual body parts
take on connotations and utility not essentially based on biological purpose (Roth 2006); body becomes a major concern
among young adult females (Shroff and Thompson 2004).
Sarah Grogan (2008) expressed in her book that the substantial rise in referrals for cosmetic surgeries, concerns about
dieting, increase in use of medicines intended to make men
more muscular and women slim, have inspired researchers to
delve deep to look for the motivations behind these behaviors
and more general experiences of embodiment.
The greater share of research conducted on body image
within the discipline of psychology since the postwar period
has been generated by way of a meticulous methodological
approach, referred to by Tiemersma (1989) as the structuralfunctional approach. The venture has culminated in a professional consensus about the conceptual structure of the body image as an Binternal representation of your own outer appearance^
(Thompson et al. 1999, p. 4). This conceptualization has salience
in everyday life, although Tiemersma (1989) referred to it as only
a memory image of the visual perception that has little to do
with the actual existence of the body. This psychological construct has ostensibly crossed over into trite language use. While
academic research refers to body image as an internal depiction
pertaining to the bodys appearance, popular media perpetually
presents never ending narratives on the efforts that women in the

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public eye expend in order to maneuver or perfect their bodily

appearance. According to Rose (1997) this transfer of technical
taxonomy into everyday language has the potential to redefine
and streamline the way we take our own selves or bodies in this
instance, as an entity of thought.
Schilder (1978: 11) defined body image as the picture of
our own body which we cognize, i.e., the way the body appears to ourselves. Since 1950, researchers have given divergent meanings to Bbody image^, and have moved ahead of
Schilders primarily perceptual definition. Kevin Thompson
and colleagues in 1999 noted 16 different definitions of Bbody
image^ used by researchers and clinicians. These incorporated
weight satisfaction, size perception accuracy, appearance
satisfaction, body satisfaction, appearance evaluation,
appearance orientation, body concern, body esteem, body
schema, and body percept. Grogan (2008) defined body image
as: a persons perceptions, thoughts, and feelings about his or
her body, whereas Borzekowski and Bayer (2005) described
it as Bthe internal representation of ones own outer appearance which reflects physical and perceptual dimensions.^ So,
with development of concepts and researches, body image
didnt remain only perceptual image, it became something
more than that, having vital significance in individuals life.
Body Dissatisfaction
Sigmund Freud (as cited in Lieberman 2012) in his work on
development of human sexuality revealed a corporeal explanation, of men and women, for how two alike beings reallocate into their sexualized roles once a more complex understanding of their body is apparent. Eminent feminist writer
Luce Irigaray criticized this Freudian notion, and articulated
that women has always been referred as the other, in her
work This Sex Which Is Not One (1985) and elsewhere.
Their body subsists as an indispensable reference point in a
discourse that is also masculine. The backdrop of body dissatisfaction among women emerges, according to her, when they
lose their position as a subject; they are always the object,
striving for befitting the norm which is mostly defined by
masculine discourse, in their own terms.
The importance of adjoining cultural and linguistic configurations has always been illustrated by Irigaray. She conveyed
the present functioning of language to be the basis why women fight to claim a value in patriarchal society. She contends
that women mostly feel deficient with their body and reject it
as Bit is precisely for which she is not the phallus that she
asks to be desired and simultaneously to be loved,^ (This Sex
Which is Not One, 1985, 62). This rejection brings about a
hollow in them; a discontent, sexual and psychological subjugation. This theoretical viewpoint suggests that women are
often dissatisfied with their body, as they always compare
themselves next to a norm that is not designed by or for them
with a belief that they are never in control of their subjectivity.

Psychol Stud (JulySeptember 2015) 60(3):257264

Several researches also demonstrated that women are more

interested in having the sorts of figures that receive most appraisals from male characters exhibited in media (Fouts and
Burggraf 1999). Female body demands recognition, as they
are always left undefined, vague, merely being a reference
point for masculine symbolic (Lieberman 2012). Irigaray
states that regrettably, the subjugation that a woman experiences in childhood is originated by her own body; consequently she cannot locate a resolution for it within herself. Her
understanding about her body becomes mystifying. This provides the principal basis for the denial of her own body; her
body does not remain a space for her own understanding of
identity. This manipulates her to receive something erroneously stabile from the external world, a world that is by and large
phallocentric. Irigaray articulates, while talking of hysteria in
women, that it is sourced by her Bloss, but [this loss] radically escapes any representation, hence the impossibility of
mourning it,^ of her own deficiencies (Speculum, 1989,
68). But a critic of Irigaray, Alison Stone, disagrees saying
that if one merely consider the body or the construction of
the identity through a socialization process, leap right back
into the crisis that it is trying to circumvent: valuing contingent
aspects of humanity (Stone, 2006, 20, as cited in Lieberman
2012). On the other hand, the significance of contiguous linguistic structures as explained by Irigaray has been supported
by contemporary feminist Judith Butler (1994); both of them
stress on the linkage among matter, body and language.
Conversely the Bulgarian-French poststructuralist and
psychoanalytical philosopher Julia Kristeva (1995) is not in
agreement with the position that language and culture are fundamentally patriarchal and ought to someway be discarded. In
contrast, she claims that culture and language are the spheres
of speaking beings and women are primarily speaking beings.
She supports the third phase of feminism that seeks to reconsider identity and difference and their relationship. She refuses
to opt for identity over difference or vice-versa; rather her
theoretical position explores multiple identities, including
multiple sexual identities.
Social pressures to be slender can originate from miscellaneous sources, such as parents, peers, partners, and the media.
These sources directly or indirectly compel individuals to be
thin. Somewhere it is the direct encouragement for diet communicated from parents to a daughter, or it may be a more
subtle persuasion by peers who voice admiration for skinny
models projected by media (Stice and Whitenton 2002).
Socio-cultural demands to be slim, as risk factors for body
dissatisfaction, have received ample theoretical attention.
Pressure to be thin from ones social milieu increases body
dissatisfaction because repeated exposures to these messages
make individuals feel discontent with her physical appearance
(Striegel-Moore et al. 1986, as cited in Stice and Whitenton
2002). Researches support the notion that perceived pressure to be thin envisages subsequent increases in body

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dissatisfaction (Stice and Bearman 2001, as cited in

Stice and Whitenton 2002).
Media holds an imperative position in adding this pressure
to be slender. Magazines aimed at younger women portray
younger and thinner models more in comparison to those,
meant for older women and these models are usually less clad
than older models (Bessenoff and Del Priore 2007, as cited in
Hall 2009). A study carried out by Park (2005) investigated
the consequence of magazine use on the longing to be thin
within the theoretical framework of presumed influence,
which found that going through beauty and fashion magazines
augmented the yearning for thinness, both directly and indirectly. These craving for thinness was amplified through the
perceived frequency of the thin ideal in mass media, the presumed pressure of the thin ideal on others, and the seeming
influence of the thin ideal on self (Park 2005).
Cahill and Mussap (2007) explored how the alteration in
emotional states, following exposures to thin ideal bodies in
the media, envisages individuals unhealthy body change attitudes and behaviors. They demonstrated that after coming
across these skinny ideal images, women went through enhanced state anger, anxiety, depression, and body dissatisfaction, which correlated with drive for thinness and disordered
eating symptomatology in women. Undergraduate women also found to be exhibiting disordered-eating, drive for thinness,
body dissatisfaction, and ineffectiveness after exposures to
medial representation of ideal bodies (Harrison and Cantor
1997, as cited in Hall 2009). So the decisive role of
medial delineation of perfect bodies crafting physical
and psychological consequences of body discontentment
in women cant be negated.
Dissatisfaction with body is a common cause of distress in
women (Cash and Henry 1995), and is growing among men
(McCabe and Ricciardelli 2004), that usually have a large
impact on quality of life (Cash and Fleming 2002) and lead
to grave psycho- pathology such as body dysmorphic syndrome, bulimia, and anorexia (Stice and Shaw 2002), as well
as diminution of self-esteem, and restrained eating behaviors
(Fett et al. 2009). Slimness is projected as a sought-after aspect
for women in flourishing Western and Eastern (Shroff and
Thompson 2004) cultures, and is allied with self -control,
elegance, social attractiveness, youth (Orbach 1993; Bordo
2003) and locus of control (Pokrajac-Bulian and iviBeirevi 2005; Furnham and Greaves 1994; McClane 1995).
Body and Locus of Control
Researches show that women with an external locus of control
generally over-estimate their body sizes and have greater dissatisfaction with their appearance (Adame et al. 1989; Garner
et al. 1976). Their belief that their lives are contrived by outside forces such as fate and other people (Frenkel et al. 1995)
may channel them to closely attend to external resources of

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information about body ideals, internalize and judge themselves against these images, and become discontented (Fouts
and Vaughan 2002). Alternatively, having an internal locus of
control may result in less attention to these media representations or less keenness (and perhaps resistance) to internalize
these messages and adversely compare them with others, as
they are more dynamic in quest of information and knowledge
pertaining to their situations than do externals.
Efforts to ascertain a relation between locus of control and
body image, mostly ended up showing that individuals with
body dissatisfaction by and large have an external locus of
control (Adame et al. 1989; Pokrajac-Bulian and iviBeirevi 2005), both in case of males (Lodyga 2009) and
females (Adame et al. 1991; McClane 1995); and for individuals with eating-disorder (Fouts and Vaughan 2002) as well as
no eating disorder (McClane 1995; Furnham and Greaves
1994); but this link between body dissatisfaction and external
locus of control among women is still obscure and much work
to be done to voice a unanimous position. But researches on
the relation of locus of control and metacognition showed
positive results, primarily because of the aspect of internal
control or self regulation.
Body and Metacognition
With these conflicting theoretical milieus the questions that
pop up are, whether these comparisons or their dissatisfaction
with their own body and their own thoughts about it is known
to them? Are they aware of their cognition, i.e., do they possess Metacognitive knowledge about it?
Metacognition, the ability to look at our thinking is as if
getting out of our head and looking at the way we think.
Metacognitive control or regulation or strategies, i.e., the ability to take remedial action when we know that we do not know
a particular subject/topic, are sequential procedures that one
employs to control cognitive activities, and to guarantee that a
cognitive goal has been met (Livingston 1977).
The metacognitive knowledge about ones body makes her
aware of the ongoing thoughts of self regarding the body, the
level of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with ones body, and the
metacognitive strategies or control helps her to take necessary
steps. Though several studies showed that metacognitive
knowledge and active metacognitive strategies are present
among women irrespective of eating disorder, but there are
variation in amount and function of metacognitive activity
between individuals with and without eating disorder and inclination of the qualitative data suggested that participants
with eating disorder believed that their thoughts were abnormal and uncontrollable (Woolrich et al. 2008). Analogous
results were found in studies done on patients with bodydysmorphic disorder, where metacognitive knowledge and
controls were present about their dissatisfaction with their
body (Cooper and Osman 2007). Rarely any study was found

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260

that focused on the metacognitive awareness regarding ones

satisfaction or dissatisfaction with own body among normal
weight people. But literature indicates that dissatisfaction with
ones body is not an altogether impossible phenomenon
among these individuals. So, there are possibilities of intriguing results that increase the importance of studying the less
explored scenario with normal weight range individuals.
With this backdrop this study attempted to explore the correspondence of body satisfaction (or dissatisfaction),
metacognitive awareness regarding it and locus of control
among female university students in normal-weight range.

Method
Participants
Thirty female university students participated in this study
were chosen after initial screening. They all belonged to the
normal weight range (BMI=18.5 to 24.9), according to the
WHOs criteria. As only University Students were taken, they
all aged between 21 and 24 years (Mean=22.5333; SD=
0.8996). Following the inclusion criteria all the participants
were of middle socio-economic status (family income 15,000
40,000 pm) and didnt have any history of eating disorder,
physical or psychological illness.
Measures
Information Schedule It was administered for the purpose of
collecting demographic details and family income, their
height and current weight (that was used to calculate BMI),
history of eating disorder, psychiatric or physical illness. This
was used for screening of the participants.
Body Image Assessment Scale It was used to assess prevalence of body image dissatisfaction among participants. This
scale was developed by Williamson et al. (1989). It has nine
male and nine female figures ranging from very thin to obese
category. Each figure has an alphabet tagged to it. The alphabets range from A to I, where A symbolizes the figure that
is very thin and I stands for the obese figure. Individuals
were asked some questions, like- which figure looks most close
to their current figure, which one looks like the ideal figure
according to them, which figure they expect to look like. The
discrepancy between the alphabets denoting perceived current
figure and ideal figure is considered to be indicating the measure of body image dissatisfaction. The test-retest reliability of
this scale was found to be 0.71 by Williamson et al. (1989).
Locus of Control Scale It was used to explore the internality
or externality of individuals locus of control. This most widely used measure of locus of control, developed by Rotter

Psychol Stud (JulySeptember 2015) 60(3):257264

(1966), is a 23-item (plus six filler items) forced-choice scale.

Rotter reported corrected split-half reliability of .79 for females, and Kuder-Richardson coefficients for various samples
in the .69 to .76 range. Test-retest reliability with various samples with 1 and 2 months intervals, ranged from .49 to .83,
correlations with a measure of social desirability ranged from
0.17 to 0.35, with a median of 0.22.
Semi Structured Interview This procedure was used. It is a
flexible method, having open-ended questions, allowing new
questions to be brought up during the interview depending on
what the interviewee says. It has been employed in this study,
to explore the metacognitive knowledge about the satisfaction
or dissatisfaction with ones own body. The interview guide
was prepared based on relevant literatures and experts opinion. This interview had a framework of themes to be explored
regarding their feeling and thoughts about and concept of their
body. An informal grouping of topics and questions are done,
that were asked in different ways for different participants
depending on the context.
Procedure
At first 44 female university students were approached at their
academic institutions. The information schedule was administered and 30 students were selected for participating in the study
after screening. Information about age, height, weight were collected from the participants. History of any diagnosed eating
disorder was ruled out based on self report of the participants.
The nature of the study was explained to them and confidentiality
was assured. Consent from the participants was taken for audio
recording of their interviews. Then they were interviewed with
help of the semi-structured interview schedule to explore the
metacognitive knowledge of participants about their own body:
their overall feeling and views about their own body; satisfaction
or dissatisfaction; if dissatisfied, then why and what would they
like to do about it. The interview sessions were of 30 to 45 min
duration each. Subsequent to this the Body Image Assessment
Scale and the Locus of Control Scale were administered. They
were asked to answer all the questions without hurry, as there
was no time limit to complete those questionnaires. Following
this another short interview was conducted regarding their responses on BIA and comparison of their responses in terms of
current, ideal and expected figure. Participants own assessment
of their body satisfaction or dissatisfaction, were thus compared
to their responses on the Body Image Assessment Scale.
Results
The audio recordings of the participants interview were transcribed and thematic analysis was done. Initially codes were
combined into preliminary themes, there after common
themes were drawn inductively from the data and the major

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261

themes surfaced up. Percentages were computed to get the

picture of the association among body discontentment, locus
of control and metacognitive knowledge. The thematically
coded data were interpreted relating them to the results drawn
from the two scales. Metacognitive awareness was measured
comparing participants responses on the Body Image
Assessment Scale with their responses on semi-structured interview. When analysis of responses on BIA corresponded
with their responses to the semi-structured interview (i.e., satisfied/dissatisfied), participants were considered to be with
greater metacognitive awareness, and where the two are in
contrast, they were considered to be metacognitively less
aware. All-embracing quotations of the responses of the participants were drawn to sustain the validity of inductively
drawn themes and the reliability of the results (Patton 2002).
Tables 1 and 2 indicates that the majority (80 %) of participants had some amount of discontentment with their current
body, had external locus of control (60 %) and were high on
metacognitive knowledge (70 %). The table also illustrates
that greater part (66.67) of those participants who were contented had internal locus of control, while majority (70.8) of
the dissatisfied participants had external locus of control.
Discrepancy regarding metacognitive awareness was also visible between participants with body satisfaction (100 %) and
dissatisfaction (58.34 %).

Discussion
Body dissatisfaction has been reported to be a prevalent fact
among women (Shisslak et al. 1995; Levchuck et al. 2000).
But the cultural representation of women has always remained
problematic. Satisfaction or dissatisfaction with ones body is
usually the resultant of a comparison with some criteria, in
case of women which is thought to be a phallocentric norm
(Irigaray 1985). While according to thinkers like Beauvoir this
is a process through which women could become the other,
the object, lacking the subjective feeling of their own body
(c.f. Butler 1999, p. 15), others (Irigaray 1985) articulate that
women are altogether unrepresentable in this phallocentric
signifying economy, where the signified and signifier both
are parts of phallocentric culture and language and if they
are to be represented, an entirely different language structure
is to be constructed. Findings of the present study show that
Table 1 The relative percentage calculation of body dissatisfaction,
locus of control and metacognitive awareness of the participants
Body Image

Locus of Control

Metacognitive Awareness

Satisfied Dissatisfied External Internal Less Aware More Aware

20

80

60

40

30

70

Table 2 The relative percentage calculation of locus of control and

metacognitive awareness among the participants with body image
satisfaction and dissatisfaction
Body Image

Locus of Control

Metacognitive Awareness

External

Internal

Less Aware

Satisfied

33.33

66.67

0.00

100.00

Dissatisfied

70.80

29.20

41.66

58.34

More Aware

80 % of the participants had dissatisfaction with their body,

longing to have a different figure than their current figure.
Remaining 20 % of the participants, who were satisfied with
their body, broadly had two sorts of responses some were
completely satisfied with their current body, who perceived
their current figure to be the ideal figure. They might have
succeeded to befit the norm. But there were others who didnt
perceive their current figure to be the ideal figure, yet didnt
want to change their current figure as they were satisfied with
it. In spite of knowing well that their current figure is not
appropriate according to the norm they didnt feel the need
to modify it. They held their own subjective view of their body
and the comfort they felt was clear from articulations like B
so this is the way I am^, a near perfect resistance to conform to
the phallocentric norm. There were few who expressed that
they might modify their figure in order to achieve the ideal,
but had no intentions of doing so either because they believed
BGod has created me like this^ and they Bneed not^ or Bcannot
do anything about it^ or to them the pursuit to achieve a
perfect figure is a Bmeaningless^ struggle in which they felt
reluctant to take part. With any of these reasons in background, it was clear that despite the presence of the pervasive
patriarchal norm, they were in comfort with their own body
and not geared up to give in to the norm.
As speaking beings with multiple identities (Kristeva
1995) women can take their standpoint; rather than remaining
mute spectators, they posses their subjective views as individuals, but unfortunately being long in a patriarchal society it
remains foreclosed in most of them Fig. 1.
Participants with body image dissatisfaction displayed either of the two sorts of wishes to be thinner and to be fatter, a
tendency to attain their subjective ideal figure. Interestingly, in
spite of being in the normal weight range, the most commonly
expressed cause of this longing and their dissatisfaction was
the apparels of own choice Bnot being fit^. Most of the participants of the current study articulated that Bnot the figures of
the heroines (models/athletes) I want, but look at the dresses,
(I) wish to wear them^. Attaining the Bzero-figure^ does not
seem to be the reason behind their wish to reach their subjective ideal figure, but the splendor of dresses remains the point
of attraction. It appears that their pleasure is not only in the
possible possession of the apparels, but making themselves
glamorous with help of those, as said Bits the dresses that

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262
Fig. 1 The emerging themes
from the data are presented as
follows

Psychol Stud (JulySeptember 2015) 60(3):257264

Wish to be thinner

Wish to change
current body

Wish to be fatter
Causes
Concerned that
dresses dont fit

Trying to fit into

the norm

Becoming less
active due to
fatness

Concern regarding
activity level

External LOC
common in
individuals with
body dissatisfaction

Metacognitive awareness is more when

satisfaction with body is revealed
Metacognitive awareness is less when
dissatisfaction with body is revealed

Body created by god

Lazy to take attempt to change body

Body
Dissatisfaction

External Locus
of Control

Metacognitive
knowledge lacking
when
dissatisfaction with
body revealed

Compensatory
mechanisms

Being active is being healthy

Concept of health
Avoiding calorie food is healthy

makes the models look attractive, glamorous and awesome^,

hence achieving a powerful position of being observed. This
concept of glamour is constructed by the media as being
enviable by others (Berger 2008, p. 126). Media with its presentation of glamorous figures construe and embody the desired idyllic. Hence, women yearn to fit into the scheme of
dressing, presented by popular media. (Stice and Whitenton
2002; Park 2005). Publicized images plausibly persuade them
to modify themselves by making them aware of what they
lack in order to become glamorous. There appears to be a
possible struggle between the lacking self and the imagined glamorous self. In a way these images seem to make
them discontented with their present self and indulging in
buying the displayed products is depicted as the only way
to regain that lost satisfaction (Berger 2008, p. 128).
Interestingly the participants wished to dress like those
female athletes who have an appeal to males, irrespective
of performances, and not ones who have muscular physique. Analysis of the participants responses on the BIA
further revealed that most participants chose that figure to
be expected and ideal, which they thought would be most

appreciated by males. Fouts and Burggraf (1999) observed that women show particular craving for media
projected female figures which are appraised by males.
There seems to exist an incessant craving for confirming
to the phallocentric discourse which may be a possible
source of womens discontent with their own body.
These representations of media appeared to affect those
women more who have an inclination to external locus of
control. They seem to closely attend to external sources of
information about body image, (Blooking at beautiful figures
everywhere aroundI also wish to be like them^), media
being one of them, and comparing these images with themselves, might lead them towards dissatisfaction with their own
bodies (Fouts and Vaughan 2002). They have mostly been
found to over-estimate their body sizes and frequently having
greater dissatisfaction with their appearances than those with
an internal locus of control (Adame et al. 1989; Garner et al.
1976). In the present research more than 70 % of the participants who were dissatisfied with their body observed to have
external locus of control. They seemed to lack the belief of
being in control of their own body. The authority of their body

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Psychol Stud (JulySeptember 2015) 60(3):257264

lied somewhere outside, which seemed to create a sense of

lacking in them.
This hollow corporeal feeling of women seem to be nurtured by the phallocentric culture and language, which let
them almost never completely be positioned as the subject,
simply having that body which lacks something essential
(Irigaray 1989). Within phallocentric linguistic structure
her body may end up being envisaged only as the reverse of
maleness and hence access to her own body is negated
(Lieberman 2012), which likely lead them to plead to be desired and loved for what they are not (Irigaray 1985). With
this lack, they learn to loose their subjectivity, focusing
more on the external loci of control they loose the agency
and pave the way for objectification of self.
A sense of lack in subjective identity seems to make it
difficult for women to find a solution to their discontent with
body, as the body itself, which has an unremitting longing to
fit into the norm, is the likely source of their repression
(Irigaray 1989). Their metacognitive knowledge regarding
this discontent is almost eternally deficient and this is further
augmented in those who possess beliefs about these sources
being external (externality of locus of control) along with that.
The knowledge of these thought processes sourcing the dissatisfaction with their body could have helped them to find an
elucidation to this displeasure. Individuals with body dysmorphic disorder or eating disorder have been found to suffer from
a lack of such metacognitive knowledge (Woolrich et al. 2008;
Cooper and Osman 2007). The current study shows that
metacognitive awareness regarding thoughts about own body
differs among people with or without body dissatisfaction, in
spite of being in the normal weightrange; while a considerable part of individuals, with body dissatisfaction, was lacking
metacognitive knowledge about their current thinking regarding their own body, individuals who were satisfied with their
current figure were aware of their cognition about body.
The concept of an ideal body was found to be related to
several ideas like Bbeing active leads the way^, Btry to avoid
calorie foods^ and Bbeing slim^, which were considered by
the participants as being healthy. Having an ideal figure and
being active seemed to be two most important criteria for
being healthy among the participants. These participants conceptualize health as related to idea of fitness and slimness.
Contemporary globalized market publicizes the slender, male
valued figures as healthy. The invasion of abundant merchandise has gradually altered the notion of beauty products
and projects them as health products. Media, mostly
the fitness magazines and channels, deliberately claim to
represent picture of health through depiction of beautiful, in vogue, fit female bodies. Through this idealization they are constructing an altogether novel concept of
health for women (Kite 2011); and this discourse is so
pervasive that individuals are unwittingly consuming
these notion of health without even realizing its socially

263

and economically constructed nature. Enhancement or

preservation of health are such alluring virtues that people easily give in to such projections; as historian Peter
Stearns (1997, pp. 5960) articulates: BPeople could indulge their taste for fashion and other products with a
realization that, if they disciplined their bodies through
an attack on fat, they could preserve or even enhance
their health^. This global revolution in conception of
thinness and health has intertwined these two concepts.
Thus phallocentric culture, media, globalization seem to
cumulatively function to expand discontent in women
with their body.

Conclusion
Dissatisfaction with ones body is a common phenomenon among female university students of normal-weight
range and their metacognitive awareness of it differs
from those who are contended with their bodies, and
the locus of control was noted to be mostly external
for these students who are not in harmony with their
body image.

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