Imagem corporal: estudo transversal em candidatos ao serviço militar em Juiz de Fora – MG

Abstract

The construction of Body Image manifests itself imbricated in social and cultural guidelines and may be influenced by several factors, such as gender, age, media as well as values dictated by friends and family. However, during adolescence young people are more susceptible due to deep physical, psychological and social changes. In this work, the target audience refers to adolescents summoned to appear in a military institution which is socially ingrained by the responsibility of "training men", symbolically marking the transition stage between adolescence and adulthood. Recently, the scientific community realized the fact that the relentless pursuit of an ideal body is also a male concern, demystifying thus the cult of the body only by women. It is accepted today that both women and men have dissatisfaction with their body image. This study aimed to assess the attitudinal dimension of body image involving aspects such as thoughts, feelings, actions, (dis)satisfaction in 131 teenagers attending compulsory military service in the city of Juiz de Fora - MG. We applied four instruments selected from the proposal to cover the components of attitudinal dimension in order to cross analyze them. They are: Influence Scale of the Three Factors - EITF (Conti et al., 2010); MaleBody Checking Questionnaire - MBCQ(Carvalho et al., 2012); Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire-3 - SATAQ-3(Amaral et al., 2011) and Body Shape Questionnaire - BSQ (Conti, Strings and Latorre, 2009). They have been designed to assess the influence of parents, friends and the media on body image, body checking behaviors, the influence of sociocultural aspects, especially the media, and the concern and satisfaction with body shape. Therefore, this is a field research of the cross-sectional kind, with data collection and analysis through descriptive and quantitative methodology. Its theoretical concepts are anchored in the psychological aspect of sociocultural perspectives for we believe it is through the body that the subject communicates with the world, establishing relationships that will influence the concept that he/she makes of himself/herself. The results showed the importance of relativizing male body dissatisfaction taking into account the specific sexual and cultural constructions involved. It was felt that dissatisfaction in adolescent men can induce them to greater frequency of body checking by checking body fat and looking for external evaluation, showing thus the concern about male body weight and the interference of the environment. It must be noted that sociocultural factors, especially friends and media, are also a source of pressure and internalization for men may reflect their body dissatisfaction.