An Investigation into the Impact of Women's Individual and Psychological Distinctions on Body Management

Having an understanding of one’s body and controlling it, called ‘body management’ in the body sociology debate, is considered one of the requirements of the present age. Control and management of the body is carried out, at times, in the form of exercise and, at other times, in the form of cosmetic surgery. Women’s caring about their appearance and beauty more than men sometimes causes them to immoderately adopt some behaviors in order to adapt their body specifications with those of the cultural beauty models advertised by the mass media and beauty industry, which results in some destructive consequences. The main question of the present study is “Do individual, psychological distinctions impact on body management?”, and if they do, “What is the extent of influence?” Georg Simmel’s theory has been utilized to develop the theoretical model. The research population consists of all the women referring to sports centers and cosmetic surgery clinics in district one of Tehran in 2013. The research method is survey and the data was collected using a questionnaire. The data analysis was carried out through both descriptive and inferential statistics including contingency tables and parametric tests (Spearman and Pearson correlation, regression, and path analysis) and the groups were compared using F-test. The research results suggest that individual, psychological distinctions affect body management. They also show that body management is significantly different with respect to age, educational level and marital status. However, body management is not significantly different in different occupational groups and there is no significant relationship between income rate and body management.