Body-related emotional experiences of young aboriginal women.

Concerns related to the body are associated with health-compromising behaviors, and although research has indicated that young Aboriginal women are dissatisfied with their bodies, their voices have typically been absent from the literature. The purpose of this case study was to provide insight into the body-related emotional experiences of young, Canadian, urban Aboriginal women. Four young women participated; 3 identified themselves as Aboriginal (one 14-year-old, two 18-year-olds) and 1 as non-Aboriginal (18 years old). Multiple methods (focus group, one-on-one interviews, and artwork) provided the authors the opportunity to listen to the young women's stories. Five themes emerged: (a) conflicting cultures, (b) need to belong, (c) the beauty of difference, (d) journey to acceptance of the body, and (e) the body affects everything. This research highlights the complexity of young Aboriginal women's body-related emotional experiences and indicates that their experiences might not be as negative as previous research has led us to believe.

Coping with social physique anxiety in adolescence.

PURPOSE: To explore how adolescents cope with social physique anxiety. METHODS: Participants were 398 female (mean age of 15.4 years, SD = 1.3) and 223 male (mean age of 15.4 years, SD = 1.1) adolescents who provided open-ended responses to a self-identified situation in which they experienced social physique anxiety. A codebook of 24 dimensions was developed to code participants' coping strategies. Measures of state and trait social physique anxietyand coping function were also completed. RESULTS: Females had significantly higher mean values than males on social physique anxiety scales and emotion-focused coping function. Females reported a total of 1051 strategies and males reported 473 coping strategies. The most commonly reported coping strategies were behavioral avoidance(reported by 41.5% of females and 33.2% of males), appearance management (39.9% females,24.4% males), social support (22.1% females, 17.1% males), cognitive avoidance (20.4% females,18.7% males), and acceptance (19.6% females, 29.0% males). Social physique anxiety in the self-identified situation was related to both trait social physique anxiety (r = .44, females; r = .36,males) and the number of strategies reported (r = .21, females; r = .23, males). CONCLUSIONS: First, this study provides important insight into the wide range of cognitive and behavioral coping strategies adolescents use to manage social physique anxiety. Second, the development of the codebook that was necessary to code the adolescents' open-ended coping responses has the potential to act as a starting point as a taxonomy for coping in the body domain.