Shape- and weight-based self esteem was proposed to be a central cognitive component of the eating disorders. In this thesis, the psychometric properties of the Shape- and Weight-Based Selfesteem (SAWBS) Inventory, a newly-developed measure of the influence of shape and weight on feelings of self-worth, were determined. A preliminary examination of possible developmental precursors of shape- and weight-based self-esteem was also performed. SAWBS scores were stable over 1 week, and correlated with women's negative perceptions about their bodies in eating disorder and undergraduate control groups (EDG and UCG, respectively). In the UCG, SAWBS scores correlated with one of two measures of shape and weight cognitive schemata. The validity of shape- and weight-based self-esteem as a central feature of eating disorder symptomatology was supported in a number of ways. SAWBS scores correlated positively with eating disorder symptom scores in the UCG, and were significantly higher in women identified as "possible or probable" eating disorder cases than in women not suspected of having an eating disorder. SAWBS scores were also higher in the EDG than in the UCG or a psychiatric control group (PCG), even after controlling for age, socioeconomic status, Body Mass Index (BMT), selfesteem, and depression. Interestingly, a differing relationship between depression and SAWBS emerged as a function of group. Follow-up investigations revealed that SAWBS scores differed significantly between depressed, but not nondepressed women from the three groups. With regard to discriminant validity, SAWBS scores were uncorrelated with BMI and socioeconomic status in UCG and EDG women, and were uncorrelated with the tendency to respond in a socially sanctionned manner in UCG women. Although the tendency to respond in a socially sanctionned manner was related to SAWBS scores in EDG women, SAWBS scores remained higher in EDG than in UCG women after the effect of social desirability was controlled. The proposed developmental precursor variables of SAWBS included endorsement of stereotyped beliefs about thinness, perceived SAWBS in friends, siblings, and parents, and perceived importance placed by parents and romantic partner on the woman's own shape and weight. In both EDG and UCG women, endorsement of societal beliefs about shape and weight, and perceived importance placed on their own shape and weight by mother and father were significantly related to SAWBS scores. In sum, the SAWBS Inventory showed early promise as a reliable and valid measure of shape- and weight-based self-esteem, and may be a useful tool in the assessment of eating disorders. Theoretical and clinical implications with regard to the role of SAWBS in the development and treatment of eating disorders are discussed.

"The Makeover and Other Consumerist Narratives" is an interdisciplinary work in both approach and scope, and reads the construction of feminine desire and identity through what is popularly known as the makeover. Bringing together such diverse areas as film, literature, women's magazines, psychoanalysis, historical analysis and cultural theory, this research is particularly concerned with visual communications media (mostly film and advertising) and spectatorship. Of central import is the relationship of consumerism to feminine identity, desire, and the historical emergence of popular entertainments aimed directly at women. / The narrative of the makeover---so prevalent in women's magazines and advertising---works to effectively orient women's desires in a consumerist direction through product promotion and self-commodification. In addition, the makeover is explored in terms of how it might be seen to provide a model by which to understand the workings of late consumer capitalism as a whole. From an excavation of the official commodity-oriented origins of the makeover in the history of women's magazines, the project then moves through a reading of several print advertisements and the phenomenon of the consumer tie-in, and finally to what I call the "Transformation Film." Questions of narrative, desire and class are key here, especially insofar as these films make explicit the connection between self-transformation, commodity consumption, feminine desire and the promise of identity in consumer culture. / At issue is the peculiar problematic of feminine desire as negotiated by Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, as well as the historical implications of female identity as explainable by Marxian commodity theory. It is only by means of examining the objects which cater to feminine desire that we may be able to understand this "culture of the makeover" and women's identity therein.

The purpose of this study is to understand the connections between the public and private worlds of American women as described in their journals and diaries and to show how the interaction between the two realms changed the way women thought about themselves, their roles, and their environment.A total of ninety-four personal narratives were examined for the study and from that number, four were profiled. Two personal narratives were examined that were published following the Suffrage Movement and two personal narratives were chosen that were published following the Liberation Movement. Methods of rhetorical analysis were used to focus on changing levels of women's awareness of self, community, roles available to women, and issues appropriate for women's attention. I examined text divisions and organization, sentence structures, and markers of audience awareness.A pattern emerges demonstrating five metamorphoses: as the twentieth century continues, women's personal narratives are exhibiting greater self-awareness, greater audience-awareness, awareness of responsibility to the community of women, and awareness of expanding opportunities for women as well as generating an ever increasing readership. / Department of English

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, August, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Purdue University, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 15-18). Also available online (PDF file) by a subscription to the set or by purchasing the individual file.

Thesis (M.S.W.)--Smith College School for Social Work, Northampton, Mass., 2007 / Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment for the degree of Master of Social Work. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 63-67).

Thesis (PhD) -- University of Western Sydney, Nepean, 1998. / Bibliography : p. 175-186.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2008. / Title from file title page. Roderick Watts, committee chair; Leslie Jackson, Page Anderson, Tracie Stewart, committee members. Electronic text (113 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed November 25, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 86-94).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Wollongong, 2004. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references: leaf 216-231.

Project (D. Min.)--Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, 1988. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 282-286).