Body Shaming and Body Dissatisfaction with Mediating Role of Social Appearance Anxiety among Women University Students with Below and Above Average Body Mass Index

Body shaming, social appearance anxiety and body dissatisfaction among women are seen as arising concerns in this modern era of electronic and social media usage, and rapid involvement of women in almost all areas of life along with men.The aim of this research was to investigate the relationship of body shaming and body dissatisfaction with the mediating role of social appearance anxiety among women university students with below and above average body mass index.For this purpose, a total of 172 women university students with age ranging from 18 to 25 years with above and below average Body Mass Index were recruited.The recruited sample was surveyed using demographic information questionnaire including BMI, Weight and Body-Related Shame and Guilt Scale (WEB-SG; Conradt et al., 2007), Social Appearance Anxiety Scale (Hart et al., 2008), and Body Dissatisfaction Scale (Tariq & Ijaz, 2015).It was hypothesized that body shaming, social appearance anxiety and body dissatisfaction have significant relationship among them.Additionally, it was hypothesized that social appearance anxiety plays a mediating role between body shaming and body dissatisfaction.It was found that there is a relationship between BMI, body shaming, social appearance anxiety and body dissatisfaction.It was also found that social appearance anxiety plays a mediating role between body shaming and body dissatisfaction with below and above BMI women students.Additionally, body shaming and social appearance anxiety predicted body dissatisfaction.This research has suggested to tackle the social pressure faced by women due to their perceived body perfect ideals being portrayed on social and mass media; underlined the need to modify women's own perceptual self, psychoeducation to refrain from undue social comparisons, and the society's thinking towards a perfect body positive approach.The study has implications for the women life with body dissatisfaction, their mental health and psycho