Body acceptance and culture: A study in northern and southern Italy

Fear of fatness and body dissatisfaction have been considered as influenced by cultural differences both in eating disordered and in normal young girl s. The culture of the industrialized world and the rural cultures are the t wo ideal poles of this theoretical scheme. Culture may act both Pia the bea uty standards suggested by media, and by cultural cognitive styles of inter pretation of bodily sensations and emotions related to eating and food. The great intracultural differences existing between northern and southern Ita ly seems to be a good field of research. The hypothesis assumed that fear o f fatness, body dissatisfaction and acceptance of mass media body ideals we re lower in southern Italian female teenagers than in northern, while feeli ngs of uncertainty in the identification of emotional states and sensations of hunger and satiety were higher. Two populations of female students draw n from two high schools in northern and southern Italy were compared on the results of DT (Drive to Thinness), ED (Body Dissatisfaction) and IA (Inter oceptive Awareness) from the Eating Disorders Inventory (EDI) and I (Intern alization) from the Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnair e (SATAQ). Whilst the IA and I scores suggested real cultural differences, no significant differences were found for the scales DT and ED. The result could be due to the non-clinical nature of the samples, to the limitations of the sampling process and to the self-report structure of the instruments . Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Associatio n.