Body image dissatisfaction is pervasive and steadily increasing (Cash & Henry, 1995), with a majority of people reporting dissatisfaction with weight or body shape. The research literature focuses on not only the "disturbed" aspects of body image (e.g., body image disturbance evidenced by patients with eating disorder or those with body dysmorphic disorder) but also the "normative" aspects of appearance-based body image (e.g., dissatisfaction seen in nonpsychiatric populations; . Clearly delineating where normal concerns with appearance or dissatisfaction approach or reach psychological disturbance is extremely difficult, and much of the literature "muddies" these distinctions. As a result, nonprofessionals may assume that any degree of body image dissatisfaction is injurious . It has been suggested that individuals lie on a continuum of "normative discontent," with the minority of individuals reporting no body image distress while those at the other extreme evidence distress so severe that it is associated with significant impairment in daily functioning (e.g., eating disorders; Rodin, Silberstein, & Striegel-Moore, 1985). We previously conceptualized body image disturbance as a multifaceted construct consisting of subjective dissatisfaction, cognitive characteristics, behavioral components, and, possibly, perceptual aspects (Thompson, Heinberg, Altabe, & Tantleff-Dunn, 1999). In this chapter, we confine our discussion to the subjective component, which we refer to as body image dissatisfaction.We have previously asserted (Heinberg, Haythomthwaite, Rosofsky, McCarron, & Clarke, 2000; and argue in this chapter that some level of body image dissatisfaction may conceivably be 215
