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 girls. The culture of the industrialized world and the rural cultures are the two ideal poles of this theoretical scheme. Culture may act both via the beauty standards suggested by media, and by cultural cognitive styles of interpretation of bodily sensations and emotions related to eating and food. The great intracultural differences existing between northern and southern Italy seems to be a good field of research. The hypothesis assumed that fear of fatness, body dissatisfaction and acceptance of mass media body ideals were lower in southern Italian female teenagers than in northern, while feelings of uncertainty in the identification of emotional states and sensations of hunger and satiety were higher. Two populations of female students drawn from two high schools in northern and southern Italy were compared on the results of DT (Drive to Thinness), BD (Body Dissatisfaction) and IA (Interoceptive Awareness) from the Eating Disorders Inventory (EDI) and I (Internalization) from the Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire (SATAQ). Whilst the IA and I scores suggested real cultural differences, no significant differences were found for the scales DT and BD. 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 © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association.