Beyond resources: how social class contexts shape women’s body image in the United Kingdom

Social class profoundly shapes the sociocultural environments that women inhabit. However, existing appearance research has not examined social class as a sociocultural factor and social class research has neglected the domain of body image. By drawing on social psychological conceptualisations of social class as a sociocultural context (Stephens & Townsend, 2013) and critical body image perspectives (e.g., Frith, 2012; Moradi, 2013; Riley et al., 2022), this thesis investigates how women’s body image experiences are shaped by their social class.

Existing quantitative research on social class and body image employs various conceptualisations of these constructs. Social class—often measured using socioeconomic status (SES) including education, income, occupation and subjective rank-based measures (e.g., Gavin et al., 2010; McLaren & Kuh, 2004)—and body image (e.g., body dissatisfaction, body appreciation; e.g., Ramseyer Winter et al., 2021; van den Berg et al., 2010) are often operationalised inconsistently. Therefore, it is difficult to disentangle the unique relationships between different indicators of social class and body image. In an initial quantitative analysis of existing data (Chapter 2), the thesis addresses this gap by exploring: i) the relationships between different indicators of SES, self-objectification and body image; and ii) how SES moderates the relationships between self-objectification and body image.

Considering the sociocultural perspective that social class encompasses different processes of socialisation that give rise to culture-specific selves (Stephens & Townsend, 2013), beyond measurements of SES, and the argument that body image is active, continual and dialogical in nature (Gleeson & Frith, 2006), the thesis further approached the exploration of women’s social class using a qualitative interpretative phenomenological approach to capture body image from an experiential perspective and to allow for new experiences to emerge beyond the confines of existing conceptualisations of body image facets. By employing a critical constructivist standpoint, Chapters 3 to 5 examine how White working-class and middle-class women make sense of their bodies and appearance within both their social class and the broader sociohistorical, cultural and discursive contexts in the United Kingdom.

The current thesis contributes to both social class and body image research. The four empirical chapters highlight: i) how social class contexts shape women’s body image beyond resource affordability; ii) novel distinctions in how White working-class and middle-class women make sense of their bodies and appearance – for instance, White working-class women tended to make sense of their appearance through appearance norms, whereas White middle-class women tended to do this through appearance standards; and iii) how broader contexts (e.g., the historical significance of British class distinction) play a role in shaping the meanings that women attach to their appearance-related experiences. These findings are discussed in relation to theoretical and practical implications, as well as my reflexivity on how my positionalities have shaped the research.