Exploring Relationships between Body Appreciation and Self-Reported Physical Health among Young Women

Body image, a multidimensional construct, affects women in myriad ways. Existing scholarship has established a relationship between body image and negative mental and sexual health outcomes and suggests that it may also be related to physical health outcomes. The purpose of the study reported in this article was to explore relationships between body appreciation, a multidimensional measure of body image, and self-perceived physical health among a sample of emerging adult women (N = 399). In this sample, body appreciation was positively and significantly related to self-perceived physical health. This study contributes to a growing body of literature on the consequences of body image among women and can be used to inform interventions aimed at improving the well-being of women.